Quotes from Bernard Shaw

Manche Menschen sehen die Dinge, wie sie sind, und fragen: Warum? Ich träume von Dingen, die es noch nie gegeben hat, und frage: "Warum nicht?

In heaven an angel is nobody in particular.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport: when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor: he took my measure anew every time he saw me, whilst all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.

Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.

All dress is fancy dress, is it not, except our natural skins?

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. That is the law of my life.

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

Your word can never be as good as your bond, because your memory can never be as trustworthy as your honor.

Everything I eat has been proved by some writer or other to be a deadly poison. Everything I don't eat has been proved indispensable to life!

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson (which is not at all necessary), hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.

How often must I tell you that we are made wise not by the recollections of our past, but by the responsibilities of our future.

Now the man in the street knows nothing of Biometrika: all he knows is that "you can prove anything by figures," though he forgets this the moment figures are used to prove anything he wants to believe.

There is no such thing as the future until it is the present.

All sorts of bodily diseases are produced by half used minds; for it is the mind that makes the body: that is my secret, and the secret of all the true healers.

Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into a giant oak. Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay.

My situation is a solemn one. Life is offered to me on condition of eating beefsteaks. But death is better than cannibalism. My will contains directions for my funeral, which will be followed not by mourning coaches, but by oxen, sheep, flocks of poultry, and a small traveling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarfs in honor of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow creatures. It will be, with the exception of Noah's ark, the most remarkable thing of the kind seen.

As to the pamphlet which he enclosed, proving vegetarianism to be an enfeebling and ultimately fatal practice, I confute it by the simple statement that I — Corno di Bassetto — have been a vegetarian these ten years. Pamphlet or no pamphlet, a mind the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows.

What can you expect from people who eat corpses and drink spirits?

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatsoever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die; for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" for 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.

...but people become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them...

Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; do not outlive yourself.