George Bernard Shaw

Composers are not human; They can live on diminished sevenths, and be contented with a pianoforte for a wife, and a string quartet for a family.

No elaboration of physical or moral accomplishment can atone for the sin of parasitism.

Our natural dispositions may be good; but we have been badly brought up, and are full of anti-social personal ambitions and prejudices and snobberies. Had we not better teach our children to be better citizens than ourselves? We are not doing that at present. The Russians are. That is my last word. Think over it.

I found many men to whom I felt deeply grateful — especially Guy de Maupassant, Jack London, and H. L. Mencken — but the first man to whom I felt definitely related was George Bernard Shaw. This is a presumptuous or fatuous thing to mention, perhaps, but even so it must be mentioned. ... I myself, as a person, have been influenced by many writers and many things, and my writing has felt the impact of the writing of many writers, some relatively unknown and unimportant, some downright bad. But probably the greatest influence of them all when an influence is most effective — when the man being influenced is nowhere near being solid in his own right — has been the influence of the great tall man with the white beard, the lively eyes, the swift wit and the impish chuckle. ... I have been fascinated by it all, grateful for it all, grateful for the sheer majesty of the existence of ideas, stories, fables, and paper and ink and print and books to hold them all together for a man to take aside and examine alone. But the man I liked most and the man who seemed to remind me of myself — of what I really was and would surely become — was George Bernard Shaw.

There are some men who are considered quite ugly, but who are more remarkable than pretty people. You often see that in artists.

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

[Isadora Duncan] wrote to George Bernard Shaw: "Will you be the father of my next child? A combination of my beauty and your brains would startle the world," but he replied: "I must decline your offer with thanks, for the child might have my beauty and your brains."

Do not try to live for ever. You will not succeed.

When will we realize that the fact that we can become accustomed to anything, however disgusting at first, makes it necessary to examine carefully everything we have become accustomed to.

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

You can feel nothing but a torment, and believe nothing but a lie. You will not raise your head to look at all the miracles of life that surround you; but you will run ten miles to see a fight or a death.

It is more dangerous to be a great prophet or poet than to promote twenty companies for swindling simple folk out of their savings.

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

The more a man possesses over and above what he uses, the more careworn he becomes.

Love is a simple thing and a deep thing: it is an act of life and not an illusion. Art is an illusion.

Happiness and Beauty are by-products.

Undershaft: My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.

He who desires a lifetime of happiness with a beautiful woman desires to enjoy the taste of wine by keeping his mouth always full of it.

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.

Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.