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There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Man and Superman
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Annajanska
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Maxims for Revolutionists
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny. They have only shifted it to another shoulder.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Man and Superman
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Caesar and Cleopatra
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Candida
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Maxims for Revolutionists
The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for a living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Man and Superman
A love affair should always be a honeymoon. And the only way to make sure of that is to keep changing the man; for the same man can never keep it up.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Too True to Be Good
Christianity as a specific doctrine was slain with Jesus, suddenly and utterly. He was hardly cold in his grave, or high in his heaven (as you please), before the apostles dragged the tradition of him down to the level of the thing it has remained ever since.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, preface to Androcles and the Lion
There is no love sincerer than the love of food.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Man and Superman
When a man of normal habits is ill, everyone hastens to assure him that he is going to recover. When a vegetarian is ill (which fortunately very seldom happens), everyone assures him that he is going to die, and that they told him so, and that it serves him right. They implore him to take at least a little gravy, so as to give himself a chance of lasting out the night.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Saturday Review, May 21, 1898
A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, The Star, Apr. 5, 1890
Better see rightly on a pound a week than squint on a million.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, preface, Plays Unpleasant
Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn’t really hurt.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Heartbreak House
Give a man health and a course to steer; and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Captain Brassbound's Conversion
The censorship method ... is that of handing the job over to some frail and erring mortal man, and making him omnipotent on the assumption that his official status will make him infallible and omniscient.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, speech, Jan. 20, 1935
Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, The Irrational Knot
Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Man and Superman
Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time.
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Maxims for Revolutionists
The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, The Devil's Disciple
He who has never hoped can never despair.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Caesar and Cleopatra
We must reform society before we can reform ourselves.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, preface to Misalliance
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