George Bernard Shaw

The problem with communication_is the illusion that is has been accomplished.

The man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound.The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

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

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active. That is why it is necessary to happiness that one should be tired.

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

There's only one way of escaping trouble; and that's killing things." Henry Higgins, Act V, Pygmalion

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild' is a snivelling modern invention, with no warrant in the gospels.

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.

An author who gives a manager or publisher any rights in his work except those immediately and specifically required for its publication or performance is for business purposes an imbecile.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.

Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery - it's the sincerest form of learning.

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

MRS PEARCE. Mr Higgins: youre tempting the girl. It__ not right. She should think of the future.HIGGINS. At her age! Nonsense! Time enough to think of the future when you havnt any future to think of.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

As it is not a settled question, you must clear your mind of the fancy withwhich we all begin as children, that the institutions under which we live,including our legal ways of distributing income and allowing people to own things, are natural, like the weather. They are not. Because they exist everywhere in our little world, we take it for granted that they have always existed and must always exist, and that they are self-acting. That is a dangerous mistake. They are in fact transient makeshifts; and many of them would not be obeyed, even by well-meaning people, if there were not a policeman within call and a prison within reach. They are being changed continually by Parliament, because we are never satisfied with them.... At the elections some candidates get votes by promising to make new laws or to get rid of old ones, and others by promising to keep things just as they are. This is impossible. Things will not stay as they are.Changes that nobody ever believed possible take place in a few generations. Children nowadays think that spending nine years in school, oldage and widows_ pensions, votes for women, and short-skirted ladies in Parliament or pleading in barristers_ wigs in the courts are part of the order of Nature, and always were and ever shall be; but their great-grandmothers would have set down anyone who told them that such things were coming as mad, and anyone who wanted them to come as wicked.

The weak may not be admired and hero-worshipped; but they are by no means disliked or shunned; and they never seem to have the least difficulty in marrying people who are too good for them. They may fail in emergencies; but life is not one long emergency: it is mostly a string of situations for which no exceptional strength is needed, and with which even rather weak people can cope if they have a stronger partner to help them out.

Don't think you can frighten me by telling me that I am alone. France is alone. God is alone. And the loneliness of God is His strength.