Inspirational Quotes by George Bernard Shaw — Words of Wisdom for Daily Success

“Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.”

“The reason why the continental European is, to the Englishman or American, so surprisingly ignorant of the Bible, is that the authorized English version is a great work of literary art, and the continental versions are comparatively artless.”

“La science est une nouvelle religion et la désinfection est son eau bénite.”

“...Hell is the home of the unreal and of the seekers for happiness. It is the only refuge from heaven, which is, as I tell you, the home of the masters of reality, and from earth, which is the home of the slaves of reality. The earth is a nursery in which men and women play at being heroes and heroines, saints and sinners; but they are dragged down from their fool’s paradise by their bodies: hunger and cold and thirst, age and decay and disease, death above all, make them slaves of reality: thrice a day meals must be eaten and digested: thrice a century a new generation must be engendered: ages of faith, of romance, and of science are all driven at last to have but one prayer, “Make me a healthy animal.” But here you escape this tyranny of the flesh; for here you are not an animal at all: you are a ghost, an appearance, an illusion, a convention, deathless, ageless: in a word, bodiless. There are no social questions here, no political questions, no religious questions, best of all, perhaps, no sanitary questions. Here you call your appearance beauty, your emotions love, your sentiments heroism, your aspirations virtue, just as you did on earth; but here there are no hard facts to contradict you, no ironic contrast of your needs with your pretensions, no human comedy, nothing but a perpetual romance, a universal melodrama. As our German friend put it in his poem, “the poetically nonsensical here is good sense; and the Eternal Feminine draws us ever upward and on...”

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.”

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

“Yes, a lifetime of happiness. If it were only the first half hour's happiness, Tavy, I would buy it for you with my last penny. But a lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.”

“You may remember that on earth—though of course we never confessed it—the death of anyone we knew, even those we liked best, was always mingled with a certain satisfaction at being finally done with them.”

“Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.”

“That is what all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud; and the world overhears them”

“HIGGINS [*snatching a chocolate cream from the piano, his eyes suddenly beginning to twinkle with mischief*] Have some chocolates, Eliza.”

“Eliza has no use for the foolish romantic tradition that all women love to be mastered, if not actually bullied and beaten.”

“The truth sticks in our throats with all the sauces it is served with: it will never go down until we take it without any sauce at all.”

“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.”

“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.”

“While browsing in a second-hand bookshop one day, George Bernard Shaw was amused to find a copy of one of his own works which he himself had inscribed for a friend: "To ----, with esteem, George Bernard Shaw.”

“He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.”

“The play was a great success, but audience was a dismal failure.”

“I’m an atheist and I thank God for it.”

“A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.”

“My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world.”

“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”

“Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends.”

“In heaven an angel is no one in particular.”

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

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

“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.”

“I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.”

“We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”

“The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.”

“We do not quit playing because we grow old, we grow old because we quit playing.”