You see things; you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?

Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity, and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.

Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.

Heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation

The American white relegates the black to the rank of shoeshine boy; and he concludes from this that the black is good for nothing but shining shoes.

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

Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.

I’m not a teacher: only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead – ahead of myself as well as you.

A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does NOT triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

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...

Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are more true: they are the only things that...

Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error.

Loyalty in a critic is corruption.

But I cant stand saying one thing when everyone knows I mean another. Whats the use in such hypocrisy? If people arrange the world that way for women, theres no good pretending it’s arranged the...

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

MRS PEARCE. Mr Higgins: youre tempting the girl. It’s 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...

The liar’s punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?

There is no love sincerer than the love of food.

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.

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

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

The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.

Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run.

Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it….

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

A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean...

The word morality, if we met it in the Bible, would surprise us as much as the word telephone or motor car.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

It is easy-terribly easy-to shake a man’s faith in himself. To take advantage of that to to break a man’s spirit is Devil’s work.

A miracle, my friend, is an event which creates faith.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

You know well I couldn’t bear to live with a low common man after you two; and it’s wicked and cruel of you to insult me by pretending I could.

We cut the throat of a calf and hang it up by the heels to bleed to death so that our veal cutlet may be white; we nail geese to a board and cram them...

A man learns to skate by staggering about and making a fool of himself. Indeed he progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself.

What you are to do without me I cannot imagine.

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.

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...

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

The most distinguished persons become more revolutionary as they grow older.

Hatred is the coward’s revenge for being intimidated.

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,...

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...

frail.” They are not artistic: they are only lascivious. They are not prosperous: they are only rich. They are not loyal, they are only servile; not dutiful, only sheepish; not public spirited, only patriotic; not...

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

I owe all my originality, such as it is, to my determination not to be a literary man. Instead of belonging to a literary club I belong to a municipal council. Instead of drinking and...

My dear: in this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.