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Home / Books / The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more

The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more

Book by George Bernard Shaw · 45 quotes · Men, Rebellious, World

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The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more Quotes

“Marriage is to me apostasy, profanation of the sanctuary of my soul, violation of my manhood, sale of my birthright, shameful surrender, ignominious capitulation, acceptance of defeat.”

“[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time.”

“Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run.”

“Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby”

“I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.”

“HIGGINS. Have you no morals, man? DOOLITTLE [unabashed] Cant afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me.”

“The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization. Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty . . . . Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys basic people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people.”

“Nothing makes a man so selfish as work.”

“I tell you that as long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.”

“The worst cliques are those which consist of one man.”

“Dancing is a very crude attempt to get into the rhythm of life.”

“Our ideals, like the gods of old, are constantly demanding human sacrifices.”

“In the arts of life main invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence and famine. ... There is nothing in Man's industrial machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in his weapons.”

“It is the highest creatures who take the longest to mature, and are the most helpless during their immaturity.”

“Civilization is a disease produced by the practice of building societies with rotten material.”

“Those who admire modern civilization usually identify it with the steam engine and the electric telegraph.”

“Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice”

“War can so easily be gilt with romance and heroism and solemn national duty and patriotism and the like by persons whose superficial literary and oratorical talent covers an abyss of Godforsaken folly.”

“You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living.”

“All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions.”

“Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in short, is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.”

“Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.”

“The philosopher is Nature's pilot. And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.”

“When it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones.”

“Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites.”

“Be like the sun and meadow, which are not in the least concerned about the coming winter.”

“There are scores of thousands of human insects who are ready at a moment's notice to reveal the Will of God on every possible subject”

“My friend, when a man has anything to tell in this world, the difficulty is not to make him tell it, but to prevent him from telling it too often.”

“The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown.”

“A tranquil woman can go on sewing longer than an angry man can go on fuming.”

“Female murderers get sheaves of offers of marriage.”

“I wish to boast that Pygmalion has been an extremely successful play all over Europe and North America as well as at home. It is so intensely and deliberately didactic, and its subject is esteemed so dry, that I delight in throwing it at the heads of the wiseacres who repeat the parrot cry that art should never be didactic. It goes to prove my contention that art should never be anything else.”

“A man's own self is the last person to believe in him, and is harder to cheat than the rest of the world.”

“Let not the right side of your brain know what the left side doeth.”

“Assassination is the extreme form of censorship; and it seems hard to justify an incitement to it on anti-censorial principles.”

“The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone, the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood”

“The great danger of conversion in all ages has been that when the religion of the high mind is offered to the lower mind, the lower mind, feeling its fascination without understanding it, and being incapable of rising to it, drags it down to its level by degrading it.”

“Pothinus: "Is it possible that Caesar, the conqueror of the world, has time to occupy himself with such a trifle as our taxes?" Caesar: "My friend, taxes are the chief business of a conqueror of the world.”

“The capacity of any conqueror is more likely than not to be an illusion produced by the incapacity of his adversary.”

“People always get tired of one another. I grow tired of myself whenever I am left alone for ten minutes, and I am certain that I am fonder of myself than anyone can be of another person.”

“Girls, like men, want to be petted, pitied, and made much of, when they are diffident, in low spirits, or in unrequited love. These are services which the weak cannot render to the strong and which the strong will not render to the weak, except when there is also a difference of sex.”

“Those who understand the steam engine and the electric telegraph spend their lives in trying to replace them with something better.”

“[...] any fool can make a discovery. Every baby has to discover more in the first years of its life than Roger Bacon ever discovered in his laboratory.”

“Property, said Proudhon, is theft. This is the only perfect truism that has been uttered on the subject.”

“Obedience simulates subordination as fear of the police simulates honesty.”