George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish dramatist, literary critic, a socialist spokesman, and a leading figure in the 20th century theater. Shaw was a freethinker, a supporter of women's rights and an advocate of equality of income. In 1925 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Shaw accepted the honor but refused the money.

thinkers home

Better keep yourself clean and bright;
you are the window through which you must see the world.

Life is a flame that is always burning itself out,
but it catches fire again every time a child is born.

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered
by anybody to this country and to humankind is to bring up a family.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

Life is no brief candle to me. 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.

The worst sin toward our fellow creature is not to hate them,
but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

People are wise in proportion not to their experience but to their capacity for experience.

The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are.
I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world
are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want,
and, if they can't find them, make them.

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

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

The greatest of our evils and the worst of our crimes is poverty.

Happiness and beauty are by-products.
Folly is the direct pursuit of happiness and beauty.

The only way to avoid being miserable is
not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

Give people health and a course to steer,
and they'll never stop to trouble about whether they're happy or not.

The reasonable people adapt themselves to the world;
the unreasonable ones persist in trying to adapt the world to themselves.

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

The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage
by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.

A day's work is a day's work, neither more nor less,
and the one who does it needs a day's sustenance,
a night's repose and due leisure,
whether he or she be a painter or a ploughman.

When people shake their heads because
we are living in a restless age, ask them
how they would like to live in a stationary
one, and do without change.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who
cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

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