George Bernard Shaw/Quotes

"With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise as entirely as I despise Shakespeare, when I measure my mind against his."

- George Bernard Shaw (Wow, conceited much?)

"Bernard Shaw has no enemies but is intensely disliked by his friends."

- Oscar Wilde

"Mr. Shaw is (I suspect) the only man on earth who has never written any poetry."

- G. K. Chesterton

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."

- George Bernard Shaw

"What is the use of straining after an amiable view of things, when a cynical view is most likely to be the true one?"

- George Bernard Shaw

"The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is."

- George Bernard Shaw

"It took me twenty years of studied self-restraint, aided by the natural decay of my faculties, to make myself dull enough to be accepted as a serious person by the British public."

- George Bernard Shaw

"Do you know what a pessimist is? A man who thinks everybody as nasty as himself, and hates them for it."

- George Bernard Shaw

"A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."

- George Bernard Shaw

"A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell."

- George Bernard Shaw

"I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind."

- George Bernard Shaw

"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

"There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it."

- George Bernard Shaw

"When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part."

- George Bernard Shaw

"Life to me is no brief candle; it is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."

- George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

"Go on writing plays, my boy. One of these days a London producer will go into his office and say to his secretary, "Is there a play from Shaw this morning?" and when she says "No," he will say, "Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish." And that's your chance, my boy."

- George Bernard Shaw, to William Douglas-Home

"It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles."

- George Bernard Shaw

"When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty."

- George Bernard Shaw

"Life does not cease to be funny when people die, any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."

- George Bernard Shaw

"The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist."

- George Bernard Shaw