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George Bernard Shaw Quotes - Page 39

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What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say I know instead of I am learning, and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say I know instead of I am learning, and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity.

George Bernard Shaw
Wise, Men, Church

We sing in a church, why can we not dance there?

George Bernard Shaw
Church, Why Not, Rebellious

I believe in Michelangelo, Velasquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by Beauty everlasting, and the message of Art that has made these hands blessed. Amen. Amen.

George Bernard Shaw
Beauty, Art, Blessed
The Doctor's Dilemma (1911) act 4

I am a sort of collector of religions: and the curious thing is that I find I can believe in them all.

George Bernard Shaw
Believe, Curiosity, Religion
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.2317, e-artnow

The plain working truth is that it is not only good for people to be shocked occasionally, but absolutely necessary to the progress of society that they should be shocked pretty often.

George Bernard Shaw
Progress Of Society, People, Truth Is
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.4277, e-artnow

Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics.

George Bernard Shaw
Fashion, Epidemics, Clothes
1906 The Doctor's Dilemma,'Preface on Doctors: Fashions and Epidemics'.

Go anywhere in England where there are natural wholesome, contented and really nice English people; and what do you find? That the stables are the real centre of the household.

George Bernard Shaw
Sarcastic, Horse, Real
Heartbreak House (1919) act 3

Nobel Prize money is a life-belt thrown to a swimmer who has already reached the shore in safety.

George Bernard Shaw
Swimming, Prize Money, Safety

This is my father. Try what you can with him! He won't listen to me, because he remembers what a fool I was when I was a baby.

George Bernard Shaw
Baby, Father, Trying
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.1437, e-artnow

We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies.

George Bernard Shaw
Soul, Atheism, Different
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.3700, e-artnow

The domestic career is no more natural to all women than the military career is natural to all men.

George Bernard Shaw
Military, Women, Careers
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.4209, e-artnow

Vulgarity is a necessary part of a complete author's equipment; and the clown is sometimes the best part of the circus.

George Bernard Shaw
Vulgarity Is, Circus, Sometimes
"London Music in 1888-89 as Heard by Corno Di Bassetto: (later Known as Bernard Shaw) with Some Further Autobiographical Particulars". Book by Bernard Shaw, 1917.

That older and greater church to which I belong: the church where the oftener you laugh the better, because by laughter only can you destroy evil without malice

George Bernard Shaw
Laughter, Evil, Laughing

There was only one virtue, pugnacity; only one vice, pacifism. That is an essential condition of war.

George Bernard Shaw
War, Vices, Essentials
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.3606, e-artnow

If you do things merely because you think some other fool expects you to do them, and he expects you to do them because he thinks you expect him to expect you to do them, it will end in everybody doing what nobody wants to do, which is in my opinion a silly state of things.

George Bernard Shaw
Silly, Thinking, Want
George Bernard Shaw (1988). “Selected Short Plays”, p.253, Penguin UK

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.

George Bernard Shaw
Firsts, Facts, Disgusting
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.2897, e-artnow

As I write, there is a craze for what is called psychoanalysis, or the cure of diseases by explaining to the patient what is the matter with him: an excellent plan if you happen to know what is the matter with him, especially when the explanation is that there is nothing the matter with him.

George Bernard Shaw
Writing, Disease, Matter
George Bernard Shaw (2016). “The Critical Shaw: On Literature”, p.48, RosettaBooks

Whenever I see the word Operation, especially Trifling Operation, I at once write off the patient as dead.

George Bernard Shaw
Writing, Patient, Operations

Bourgeois morality is largely a system of making cheap virtues a cloak for expensive vices.

George Bernard Shaw
Vices, Morality, Virtue

Nationalism must now be added to the refuse pile of superstitions. We are now citizens of the world, and the man who divides the race into elect Irishmen and reprobate foreign devils (especially Englishmen) had better live on the Blaskets where he can admire himself without disturbance.

George Bernard Shaw
Men, Race, Devil

The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

George Bernard Shaw
Truth, Honesty, Honor
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.2406, e-artnow

There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.

George Bernard Shaw
Marriage, Nonsense, Dangerous
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.432, e-artnow

What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?

George Bernard Shaw
Long, Giving, Car
The Apple Cart (1930) act 1

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.

George Bernard Shaw
Inspirational, Education, Learning
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.1459, e-artnow

Captain Shotover: How much does your soul eat? Ellie: Oh, a lot. It eats music and pictures and books and mountains and lakes and beautiful things to wear and nice people to be with.

George Bernard Shaw
Beautiful, Nice, Book
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.3699, e-artnow

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