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George Bernard Shaw Quotes - Page 23

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Nothing soothes me more after a long and maddening course of pianoforte recitals than to sit and have my teeth drilled.

Nothing soothes me more after a long and maddening course of pianoforte recitals than to sit and have my teeth drilled.

George Bernard Shaw
Piano, Long, Teeth

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw
Music, Clever, Hell
Man and Superman act 3 (1903)

Perhaps you know some well-off families who do not seem to suffer from their riches. They do not overeat themselves; they find occupations to keep themselves in health; they do not worry about their position; they put their money into safe investments and are content with a low rate of interest; and they bring up their children to live simply and do useful work. But this means that they do not live like rich people at all, and might therefore just as well have ordinary incomes.

George Bernard Shaw
Children, Mean, People

There is, on the whole, nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school. To begin with, it is a prison. But in some respects more cruel than a prison. In a prison, for instance, you are not forced to read books written by the warders and the governor. . . .In the prison you are not forced to sit listening to turnkeys discoursing without charm or interest on subjects that they don't understand and don't care about, and therefore incapable of making you understand or care about. In a prison they may torture your body; but they do not torture your brains.

George Bernard Shaw
Book, School, People

There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles; he supports his king on loyal principles and cuts off his king's head on republican principles.

George Bernard Shaw
Kings, Patriotic, Fighting
The Man of Destiny (1898)

Such poverty as we have today in all our great cities degrades the poor, and infects with its degradation the whole neighborhood in which they live. And whatever can degrade a neighborhood can degrade a country and a continent and finally the whole civilized world, which is only a large neighborhood.

George Bernard Shaw
Country, Cities, Degradation

The notion that Nature does not proceed by jumps is only one of the budget of plausible lies that we call classical education. Nature always proceeds by jumps. She may spend twenty thousand years making up her mind to jump; but when she makes it up at last, the jump is big enough to take us into a new age.

George Bernard Shaw
Nature, Lying, Years
George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Plays of George Bernard Shaw (Illustrated): Including Renowned Titles like Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, The Inca Of Perusalem, Macbeth Skit, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion”, p.2984, e-artnow

Plato long ago pointed out the importance of being governed by men with sufficient sense of responsibility and comprehension of public duties to be very reluctant to undertake the work of governing.

George Bernard Shaw
Plato, Responsibility, Men
George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.2587, e-artnow

It exasperated her to think that the dungeon in which she had languished for so many unhappy years had been unlocked all the time, and that the impulses she had so carefully struggled with and stifled for the sake of keeping well with society, were precisely those by which alone she could have come into any sort of sincere human contact.

George Bernard Shaw
Thinking, Years, Awkward
George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.3427, e-artnow

Violence is the repartee of the illiterate.

George Bernard Shaw
Violence, Illiterate, Repartee

You have to choose between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the government. And, with due respect to these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold.

George Bernard Shaw
Respect, Money, Honesty

The Indian way of life provides the vision of the natural, real way of life. We veil ourselves with unnatural masks. On the face of India are the tender expressions which carry the mark of the Creators hand.

George Bernard Shaw
Real, Expression, Hands
"Science & Technology in India Through the Ages". Book by George Bernard Shaw (p. 213),

The apparent multiplication of gods is bewildering at the first glance, but you soon discover that they are the same GOD. There is always one uttermost God who defies personification. This makes Hinduism the most tolerant religion in the world, because its one transcendent God includes all possible gods. In fact Hinduism is so elastic and so subtle that the most profound Methodist, and crudest idolater, are equally at home with it.

George Bernard Shaw
Home, Profound, World

The function of comedy is to dispelunconsciousness by turning the searchlight of the keenest moral and intellectual analysisright on to it.

George Bernard Shaw
Intellectual, Comedy, Moral

Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal.

George Bernard Shaw
Science, Imagination, Goal
1906 The Doctor's Dilemma, preface,'The Latest Theories'.

Take the utmost care to get well born and well brought up.

George Bernard Shaw
Get Well, Care, Born
From his Preface on Doctors published with The Doctor's Dilemma (1911)

Alcohol is a very necessary article. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.

George Bernard Shaw
Morning, Drinking, Food
Major Barbara (1907) act 2

Altogether too many sheep

George Bernard Shaw
Sheep, New Zealand

From a very early age, I've had to interrupt my education to go to school.

George Bernard Shaw
Inspirational, Educational, School

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

George Bernard Shaw
Roots, Virtue, Economy
George Bernard Shaw (2015). “George Bernard Shaw: Collected Articles, Lectures, Essays and Letters: Thoughts and Studies from the Renowned Dramaturge and Author of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Pygmalion, Arms and The Man, Saint Joan, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion”, p.311, e-artnow

I have studied him - the wonderful man - and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ he must be called the saviour of humanity.

George Bernard Shaw
Men, Humanity, Islam
The Genuine Islam, Singapore, Vol. 1, No. 8, 1936.

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

George Bernard Shaw
Happiness, Pursuit, Folly
George Bernard Shaw (2015). “George Bernard Shaw: Collected Articles, Lectures, Essays and Letters: Thoughts and Studies from the Renowned Dramaturge and Author of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Pygmalion, Arms and The Man, Saint Joan, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion”, p.311, e-artnow

To endure the pain of living, we all drug ourselves more or less with gin, with literature, with superstitions, with romance, with idealism, political, sentimental, and moral, with every possible preparation of that universal hashish: imagination.

George Bernard Shaw
Pain, Imagination, Romance

It is courage, courage, courage, that raises the blood of life to crimson splendor.

George Bernard Shaw
Courage, Blood, Splendor
George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Plays of George Bernard Shaw (Illustrated): Including Renowned Titles like Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, The Inca Of Perusalem, Macbeth Skit, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion”, p.2934, e-artnow

It is a monstrous thing to force a child to learn Latin or Greek or mathematics on the ground that they are an indispensable gymnastic for the mental powers. It would be monstrous even if it were true.

George Bernard Shaw
Children, Latin, Learning
George Bernard Shaw (2015). “George Bernard Shaw: The Collected Plays (Illustrated): 60 plays including Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, The Apple Cart, Cymbeline, Androcles And The Lion, The Man Of Destiny, The Inca Of Perusalem and Macbeth Skit”, p.2005, e-artnow

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