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(no category)
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My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.
-George Bernard Shaw
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There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find an Englishman 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.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Majesty: when a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
-George Bernard Shaw
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You see things; and you say Why? But I dream things that never were; and I say Why not?
-George Bernard Shaw
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Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
-George Bernard Shaw
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You have set up in New York Harbor a monstrous idol which you call Liberty. The only thing that remains to complete that monument is to put on its pedestal the inscription written by Dante on the gate of hell: All hope abandon ye who enter here.
-George Bernard Shaw
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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 for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the Capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold.
-George Bernard Shaw
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The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Ability
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Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Actors, Acting
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Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Advice
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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.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Age
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Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Alcohol/Alcoholism
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I'm only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler.
-George Bernard Shaw
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America
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England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
-George Bernard Shaw, "Reader's Digest", November, 1942
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Anarchy
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The ordinary man is an anarchist. He wants to do as he likes. He may want his neighbor to be governed, but he himself doesn't want to be governed. He is mortally afraid of government officials and policemen.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Ancestry, Ancestors
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Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Angels
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In Heaven an angel is nobody in particular.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Apathy
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The worst sin... is... to be indifferent.
-George Bernard Shaw
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The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Argument & Debate
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A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Art
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Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Atheism
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I'm an atheist and I thank God for it.
-George Bernard Shaw
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The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic 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.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Authors & Writing
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The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.
-George Bernard Shaw
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You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Beauty
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Beauty is all very well at first sight; but whoever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?
-George Bernard Shaw
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Belief
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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.
-George Bernard Shaw
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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
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Books
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In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Bravery
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I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Censorship
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Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books nobody reads.
-George Bernard Shaw
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All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. There is the whole case against censorships in a nutshell.
-George Bernard Shaw, Preface to Mrs. Warren's Profession
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Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Chance
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People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Change
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Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
-George Bernard Shaw
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The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Charity
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In your Salvation shelter I saw poverty, misery, cold and hunger. You gave them bread and treacle and dreams of heaven. I give from thirty shillings a week to twelve thousand a year. They find their own dreams; but I look after the drainage.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Chocolate
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What use are cartridges in battle? I always carry chocolate instead.
-George Bernard Shaw, 1894
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Christianity
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The early Christian rules of life were not made to last, because the early Christians did not believe that the world itself was going to last.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Class
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I have to live for others and not for myself: that's middle-class morality.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Community
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This is the true joy in life: Being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
-George Bernard Shaw, attributed as from a speech at Brighton
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Confidence
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It is easy -- terribly easy -- to shake a man's faith in himself. To take advantage of that to break a man's spirit is devil's work.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Conflict
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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 dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most. On Other Peoples Expectations: The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor; he took my measurement anew every time he saw me, while all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.
-George Bernard Shaw
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In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it's more dangerous to lose than to win.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Consequences
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Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Constitution
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The American Constitution, one of the few modern political documents drawn up by men who were forced by the sternest circumstances to think out what they really had to face, instead of chopping logic in a university classroom.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Consumerism
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You have no more right to consume happiness without producing it, than you do to consume wealth without producing it.
-George Bernard Shaw, Candida, Act I, 1898
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Contradiction
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How can what an Englishman believes be hearsay? It is a contradiction in terms.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Conversation
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She has lost the art of conversation, but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.
-George Bernard Shaw
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I don't want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Cowardice/Weakness
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Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Crime
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When it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones.
-George Bernard Shaw
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The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Curiosity
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A man's interest in the world is only an overflow from his interest in himself.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Cynicism
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The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Dance, Dancing
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A perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Danger
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In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Death
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Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one's heart; but death is a splendid thing --a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.
-George Bernard Shaw
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I want to be all used up when I die.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Debt / Borrow / Loan
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The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Deception/Lying
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The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Democracy
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I talk democracy to these men and women. I tell them that they have the vote, and that theirs is the kingdom and the power and the glory. I say to them You are supreme: exercise your power. They say, That's right: tell us what to do; and I tell them. I say Exercise our vote intelligently by voting for me. And they do. That's democracy; and a splendid thing it is too for putting the right men in the right place.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
-George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, The Revolutionist's Handbook
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Desires
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Our necessities are few, but our wants are endless.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Doctors
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The doctor learns that if he gets ahead of the superstitions of his patients he is a ruined man; and the result is that he instinctively takes care not to get ahead of them.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Every doctor will allow a colleague to decimate a whole countryside sooner than violate the bond of professional etiquette by giving him away.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Duty
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When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Economics
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If all the economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Education
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What we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real.
-George Bernard Shaw
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A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Envy / Jealousy
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Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Equality
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Between persons of equal income there is no social distinction except the distinction of merit. Money is nothing: character, conduct, and capacity are everything. There would be great people and ordinary people and little people, but the great would always be those who had done great things, and never the idiots whose mothers had spoiled them and whose fathers had left them a hundred thousand a year; and the little would be persons of small minds and mean characters, and not poor persons who had never had a chance. That is why idiots are always in favor of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favor of equality.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Ethics
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Rich men without convictions are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Evil
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I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Exaggeration
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Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Example
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If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not an example.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Experience
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Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.
-George Bernard Shaw
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If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience!
-George Bernard Shaw
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Faith
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We have not lost faith, but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Family
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He didn't dare to, because his father had a weak heart and habitually threatened to drop dead if anybody hurt his feelings. You may have noticed that people with weak hearts are the tyrants of English married life.
-George Bernard Shaw
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When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Fashion
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Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Father
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My father must have had some elementary education for he could read and write and keep accounts inaccurately
-George Bernard Shaw
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Fellowship
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A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Fight, Fighting
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That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms.
-George Bernard Shaw
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The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Flattery
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What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Food
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There is no love sincerer than the love of food.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Fools, Foolishness
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Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Forgiveness
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The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
-George Bernard Shaw
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Friends
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The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.
-George Bernard Shaw
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But a lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Future, The
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We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Gambling (Gaming)
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Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich, something for nothing.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Gardens
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The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Generations
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It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.
-George Bernard Shaw
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God
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To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching Man to regard himself as an experiment in the realization of God, to regard his hands as God's hand, his brain as God's brain, his purpose as God's purpose. He must regard God as a helpless Longing, which longed him into existence by its desperate need for an executive organ.
-George Bernard Shaw
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The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone: the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Gossip
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The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Government
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The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion. When they refuse to be governed by law or persuasion, they have to be governed by force or fraud, or both.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Grief, Grieving
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Don't order any black things. Rejoice in his memory; and be radiant: leave grief to the children. Wear violet and purple. Be patient with the poor people who will snivel: they don't know; and they think they will live for ever, which makes death a division instead of a bond.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Growth
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You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking and getting well hammered yourself.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Happiness
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Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannot endure it. Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life.
-George Bernard Shaw
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A lifetime of happiness? No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Give a man health and a course to steer; and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Hate
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Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Healing
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I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Health
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Of all the anti-social vested interests the worst is the vested interest in ill-health.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Hell
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A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in short, is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Heroes/Heroism
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You cannot be a hero without being a coward.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Home
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Home life, as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.
-George Bernard Shaw, from the 1911 preface 'Hearth and Home' to his book 'Getting Married'
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Honesty
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We must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Hope
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He who has never hoped can never despair.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Horses, Horse Racing
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Go anywhere in England where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and really nice English people; and what do you always find? That the stables are the real center of the household.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Humanity
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There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Human beings are the only animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and calves and that men and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Humor
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My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Suppose the world were only one of God's jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one?
-George Bernard Shaw
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Hunting
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When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Ideas
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I tell you that as long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Imagination
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Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will.
-George Bernard Shaw
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You see things as they are and ask, 'Why?' I dream things as they never were and ask, 'Why not?'
the serpent saying to Eve
-George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah
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Independence
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Independence? That's middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
-George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, 1912
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Industry
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...with the black marble which gives the fireplace the air of a miniature family vault, to suggest early Victorian commercial respectability, belief in money, Bible fetichism, fear of hell always at war with fear of poverty, instinctive horror of the passionate character of art, love and Roman Catholic religion, and all the first fruits of plutocracy in the early generations of the industrial revolution.
-George Bernard Shaw, You Never Can Tell
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Insects
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Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Instinct
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Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Intelligence
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Find enough clever things to say, and you're a Prime Minister; write them down and you're a Shakespeare.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Joy, Excitement
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The joy in life is to be used for a purpose. I want to be used up when I die.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Language
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The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.
-George Bernard Shaw
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If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentlemen, he may pronounce as he pleases.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Laughter
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Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Law
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Whenever you wish to do anything against the law, Cicely, always consult a good solicitor first.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Liberty
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Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Life
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Life is a disease; and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You are always at the crisis: I am always in the convalescent stage.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Love
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The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
-George Bernard Shaw
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First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity: no really self-respecting woman would take advantage of it.
-George Bernard Shaw
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If you value a man's regard, strive with him. As to liking, you like your newspaper -- and despise it.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Madness
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We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!
-George Bernard Shaw
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Mankind, Man
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In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence, and famine.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Manners
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The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Marriage
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There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
-George Bernard Shaw
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It is a woman's business to get married as soon as possible, and a man's to keep unmarried as long as he can.
-George Bernard Shaw
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When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
-George Bernard Shaw
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This comes of James teaching me to think for myself, and never to hold back out of fear of what other people may think of me. It works beautifully as long as I think the same things as he does.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Memory
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Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Men
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Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid of.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Men & Women
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If women were as fastidious as men, morally or physically, there would be an end of the race.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Miracles
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A miracle is an event which creates faith. That is the purpose and nature of miracles. Frauds deceive. An event which creates faith does not deceive: therefore it is not a fraud, but a miracle.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Mirrors
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You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Mistakes
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A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Money
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Lack of money is the root of all evil.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity, and beauty as conspicuously as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness, and ugliness.
-George Bernard Shaw
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The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization. Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty. Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys base people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people.
-George Bernard Shaw
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The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Better see rightly on a pound a week than squint on a million.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Morals
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Morality is suspecting other people of not being legally married.
-George Bernard Shaw
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An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
-George Bernard Shaw
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The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Music
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Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Nation, Nationality, Nationalism
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Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him.
-George Bernard Shaw
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I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Opportunity
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The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Patriotism
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Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
-George Bernard Shaw
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You'll never have a quiet world until you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
-George Bernard Shaw, O'Flaherty, V.C.
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Patronize, Patronizing
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She has taken a patronizing fancy to her father, the Admiral, who accepts her condescension gratefully as age brings more and more home to him the futility of his social position.
-George Bernard Shaw, An Unsocial Socialist (CH. XVIII)
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Peace
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Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous
-George Bernard Shaw
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Perception
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Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Perfection
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If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn't be anything for us to do.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Pessimism
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A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Philosophy
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The philosopher is Nature's pilot. And there you have our difference: to be n hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Photography
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The camera can represent flesh so superbly that, if I dared, I would never photograph a figure without asking that figure to take its clothes off.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Play/Games
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In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.
-George Bernard Shaw
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He hates chess. He says it is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something clever when they are only wasting their time.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Pleasure
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Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Politics
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We mustn't be stiff and stand-off, you know. We must be thoroughly democratic, and patronize everybody without distinction of class.
-George Bernard Shaw
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He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Population
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The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Poverty
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The seven deadly sins... food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted.
-George Bernard Shaw
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The greatest evils and the worst of crimes is poverty; our first duty, a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Power
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You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Prayer
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Common people do not pray; they only beg.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Prejudice
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You are all fundamentalists with a top dressing of science. That is why you are the stupidest of conservatives and reactionists in politics and the most bigoted of obstructionists in science itself. When it comes to getting a move on you are all of the same opinion: stop it, flog it, hang it, dynamite it, stamp it out.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Prison
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The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Problems
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All problems are finally scientific problems.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Professionalism
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All professions are conspiracies against the laity.
-George Bernard Shaw
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No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Progress
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As long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Property
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Property is organized robbery.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Prophecy
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Some men see things as they are and say, Why? I of dream things that never were, and say, Why not?
-George Bernard Shaw
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Purpose
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We know there is intention and purpose in the universe, because there is intention and purpose in us.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones. All men mean well.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Questions
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No question is so difficult to answer as that which the answer is obvious.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Quotations
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I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Reading
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How can you dare teach a man to read until you've taught him everything else first?
-George Bernard Shaw
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Reason
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Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
-George Bernard Shaw
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He never does a proper thing without giving an improper reason for it.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Religion
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There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
-George Bernard Shaw
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My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.
-George Bernard Shaw
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All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of story-tellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.
-George Bernard Shaw
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The Jews generally give value. They make you pay; but they deliver the goods. In my experience the men who want something for nothing are invariably Christians.
-George Bernard Shaw
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We sing in a church, why can we not dance there?
-George Bernard Shaw
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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 skepticism and activity.
-George Bernard Shaw
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The great danger of conversion in all ages has been that when the religion of the high mind is offered to the lower mind, the lower mind, feeling its fascination without understanding it, and being incapable of rising to it, drags it down to its level by degrading it.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Reputation
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My reputation grew with every failure.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Respect
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Well, dearie, men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability. But you can't blame them for that, can you?
-George Bernard Shaw
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Rest, Leisure
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Leisure may be defined as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes, labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Restraint
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It took me twenty years of studied self-restraint, aided by the natural decay of my faculties, to make myself dull enough to be accepted as a serious person by the British public.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Retirement
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I feel nothing but the accursed happiness I have dreaded all my life long: the happiness that comes as life goes, the happiness of yielding and dreaming instead of resisting and doing, the sweetness of the fruit that is going rotten.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Revolution
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Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Right, Rightness
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The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Royalty, Kings, Queens
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Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Sacrifice
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Self-denial is not a virtue, it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Sadness
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The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.
-George Bernard Shaw
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It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.
-George Bernard Shaw
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A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Sanity
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An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Satisfaction
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As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Science
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Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Science is always wrong, it never solves a problem without creating ten more.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Secrets
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There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.
-George Bernard Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession
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Service
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Ladies and gentleman are permitted to have friends in the kennel, but not in the kitchen.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Shame
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We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Silence
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Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Sincerity
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It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Singing
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When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Sleep
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A nap, my friend, is a brief period of sleep which overtakes superannuated persons when they endeavor to entertain unwelcome visitors or to listen to scientific lectures.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Soul
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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
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Style
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A man of great common sense and good taste -- meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Success & Failure
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Success covers a multitude of blunders.
-George Bernard Shaw
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I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Talent
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No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Taxation
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A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Teaching
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What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
-George Bernard Shaw
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He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Thought
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I was a freethinker before I knew how to think.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself thinking once or twice a week.
-George Bernard Shaw
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It is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to think otherwise than in the fashion of their own period.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Time
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Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Tragedy
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There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Travel
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Life on board a pleasure steamer violates every moral and physical condition of healthy life except fresh air. It is a guzzling, lounging, gambling, dog's life. The only alternative to excitement is irritability.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Truth
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Though I can make my extravaganzas appear credible, I cannot make the truth appear so.
-George Bernard Shaw
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All great truths begin as blasphemies.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Unions
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No king on earth is as safe in his job as a Trade Union official. There is only one thing that can get him sacked; and that is drink. Not even that, as long as he doesn't actually fall down.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Unrequited Love
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Girls, like men, want to be petted, pitied, and made much of, when they are diffident, in low spirits, or in unrequited love. These are services which the weak cannot render to the strong and which the strong will not render to the weak, except when there is also a difference of sex.
-George Bernard Shaw, An Unsocial Socialist (Chapter VII)
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Vegetarian
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A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Violence
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If you strike a child, take care that you strike it in anger, even at the risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neither can nor should be forgiven.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Virtue
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Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.
-George Bernard Shaw
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What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?
-George Bernard Shaw
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Voting
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An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Wealth
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What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness.
-George Bernard Shaw
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The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Wisdom
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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.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Women
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The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Work
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Nothing makes a man so selfish as work.
-George Bernard Shaw
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When I was a young man I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. I didn't want to be a failure, so I did ten times more work.
-George Bernard Shaw
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A man who has no office to go to -- I don't care who he is -- is a trial of which you can have no conception.
-George Bernard Shaw
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This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
-George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (Epistle Dedicatory To Arthur Bingham Walkley), 1903
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Youth
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Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.
-George Bernard Shaw
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It is all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Even the youngest of us may be wrong sometimes.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Youth is such a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
-George Bernard Shaw
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Books by and about George Bernard Shaw
