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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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Books by and about George Bernard Shaw