Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.
Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
You see things; you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?
The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.
A photographer is like a cod, which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity.
Animals are my friends…and I don’t eat my friends.
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.
My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.
The play was a great success, but audience was a dismal failure.
When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.
We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.
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….
If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.
The truth sticks in our throats with all the sauces it is served with: it will never go down until we take it without any sauce at all.
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.
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.
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.
The man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound.The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.
Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.
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.
In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.
You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something.
What we want to see is the child in pursuit of the knowledge not the knowledge in pursuit of the child.
Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.
What is the matter with universities is that the students are school children, whereas it is of the very essence of university education that they should be adults.
Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parent.
Science never solves a problem without creating ten more
Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.
Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.
If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you’ll find you’ve done it.
Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it….
Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity, and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.
It is a woman’s business to get married as soon as possible, and a man’sto keep unmarried as long as he can.
Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds, cannot change anything.
The heart of an Irishman is nothing but his imagination
Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time.
One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven’t and don’t.
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.
[H]e is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can’t sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can’t sleep with the window open.
Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned. May not one lost soul be permitted to abstain?
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.
My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself.
Well, what do they all amount to, these kings and captains and bishops and lawyers and such like? They just leave you in the ditch to bleed to death; and the next thing is, you meet them down there, for all the airs they give themselves.
We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!
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 are true.
Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn’t!
Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.
The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.
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.
As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.
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 of.
No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.
Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery – it’s the sincerest form of learning.
A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.
An author who gives a manager or publisher any rights in his work except those immediately and specifically required for its publication or performance is for business purposes an imbecile.
Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ is a snivelling modern invention, with no warrant in the gospels.
There’s only one way of escaping trouble; and that’s killing things.” Henry Higgins, Act V, Pygmalion
HIGGINS. Have you no morals, man?DOOLITTLE [unabashed] Cant afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me.
The problem with communication…is the illusion that is has been accomplished.
Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.
My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.
HOSTESS. Oh, nonsense! She speaks English perfectly.NEPOMMUCK. Too perfectly. Can you shew me any English woman who speaks English as it should be spoken? Only foreigners who have been taught to speak it speak it well.
HIGGINS [aggrieved] Do you mean that my language is improper?MRS HIGGINS. No, dearest: it would be quite proper – say on a canal barge…
The liar’s punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error.
The word morality, if we met it in the Bible, would surprise us as much as the word telephone or motor car.
Doing what needs to be done may not make you happy, but it will make you great.
The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.
If we women were particular about men’s characters, we should never get married at all.
At present there is not a single credible established religion in the world.
Heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation
I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.
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.
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.
The quality of a play is the quality of its ideas.
While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?
The most distinguished persons become more revolutionary as they grow older.
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.
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.
[Man] progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself.
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn’t really hurt.
Hatred is the coward’s revenge for being intimidated.
What man really wishes to do he will find a means of doing.
How can she? She’s incapable of understanding anything. Besides, do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we ever do it?
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.
You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.
The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not a man of honor.
How we lavish our money and worship on Shakespeare without in the least knowing why!
You think, because you have a purpose, Nature must have one. You might as well expect it to have fingers and toes because you do.
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.
My dear: in this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.
Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run.
I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per cent an idiot.
Old-fashioned people think you can have a soul without money. They think the less money you have, the more soul you have. Young people nowadays know better. A soul is a very expensive thing to keep: much more so than a motor car.
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.
A man’s interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
Well, I’ve known over thirty men who’ve found out how to cure consumption. Why do people go on dying of it, Colly? Devilment I suppose!
Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.
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 other way…
CHARTERIS [unfolding his arms in terror] No, please. Dont. As a philosopher, it’s my business to tell other people the truth; but it’s not their business to tell it to me. I dont like it: it hurts.
Liquor is the chloroform which enables the poor man to endure the painful operation of living.
The solid earth sways like the treacherous sea beneath the feet of men and spirits alike when the innocent are slain in the name of law, and their wrongs are undone by slandering the pure of heart.
The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
You have learned something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.
My opportunities were still there nay they multiplied tenfold but the strength and youth to cope with them began to fail and to need eking out with the shifty cunning of experience.
Without art the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.
The test of a man or woman’s breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.
Peace is not only better than war but infinitely more arduous.
All professions are a conspiracy against the country.
When people shake their heads because we are living in a restless age ask them how they would like to life in a stationary one and do without change.
Progress is impossible without change and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
Self-denial is not a virtue it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.
She had lost the art of conversation but not unfortunately the power of speech.
You don’t learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard but by attacking and getting well hammered yourself.
You don’t learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard but by attacking and getting well-hammered yourself.
Progress is impossible without change and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.
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.
As long as I have a want I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
You can lose a man like that by your own death but not by his.
There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.
I am only a beer teetotaller not a champagne teetotaller.
It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him.
England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
fights you on patriotic principles he robs you on business principles he enslaves you on imperial principles.
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
Men are wise in proportion not to their experience but to their capacity for experience.
Men are wise in proportion not to their experience but to their capacity for experience.
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.
What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do.
The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing.
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.
Use your health even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die do not outlive yourself.
Give a man health and a course to steer and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.
Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
The art of government is the organization of idolatry.
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
Happiness and beauty are by-products. Folly is the direct pursuit of happiness and beauty.
The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.
Give a man health and a course to steer and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.
Give a man health and a course to steer and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.
Hatred is the coward’s revenge for being intimidated.
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
Martyrdom – the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.
The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood.
The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them but to be indifferent to them that’s the essence of inhumanity.
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of Hell.
No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another.
A learned man is an idler who kills time by study.
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
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 man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.
It is assumed that the woman must wait motionless until she is wooed. That is how the spider waits for the fly.
Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.
The fickleness of the woman I love is equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed but that he cannot believe anyone else.
The whole world is strewn with snares traps gins and pitfalls for the capture of men by women.
You don’t learn to hold your own by standing on guard but by attacking and getting well hammered yourself.
I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worthwhile.
Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
An election is a moral horror as bad as a battle except for the blood a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.
As long as I have a want I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
As long as I have a want I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
As long as I have a want I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
As long as I have a want I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
As long as I have a want I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
As long as I have a want I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
As long as I have a want I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
As long as I have a want I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
As long as I have a want I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
From Mozart I learnt to say important things in a conversational way.
A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.
A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.
A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.
A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.
A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.
A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.
A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.
A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.
A day’s work is a day’s work neither more nor less and the man who does it needs a day’s sustenance a night’s repose and due leisure whether he be painter or ploughman.
A day’s work is a day’s work neither more nor less and the man who does it needs a day’s sustenance a night’s repose and due leisure whether he be painter or ploughman.
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.
Parentage is a very important profession but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interests of the Children.
The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the parents’ first duty.
A pessimist? A man who thinks everybody as nasty as himself and hates them for it.
The philosopher is Nature’s pilot – and there you have our difference to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.
The philosopher is Nature’s pilot. And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.
He knows nothing he thinks he knows everything – that clearly points to a political career.
Modern poverty is not the poverty that was blest in the Sermon on the Mount.
What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattery.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton you may as well make it dance.
Religion is a great force – the only real motive force in the world but you must get at a man through his own religion not through yours.
Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it.
Reformers have the idea that change can be achieved by brute sanity.
If you go to heaven without being naturally qualified for it you will not enjoy it there.
Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
Self-control is the quality that distinguishes the fittest to survive.
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. The people who get on in this world are they who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can’t find them make them.
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.
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 opinion of our experience just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.
I believe in the discipline of silence and could talk for hours about it.
Englishmen never will be slaves they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allow them to do.
A soldier is an anachronism of which we must get rid.
If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentleman he may pronounce as he pleases.
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport: wlien the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.
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.
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.
Never resist temptation: prove all things: hold fast that which is good.
The great advantage of a hotel is that it’s a refuge from home life.
One man who has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven’t and don’t.
My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.
Virtue consists not in abstaining from vice but in not desiring it.
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.
The fickleness of the woman I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
Woman’s dearest delight is to wound Man’s self-conceit though Man’s dearest delight is to gratify hers.
England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.
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.
You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
Never believe anything a writer tells you about himself. A man comes to believe in the end the lies he tells himself about himself.
My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say and then to say it with the utmost levity.
It’s all that the young can do for the old to shock them and keep them up to date.
Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
Never fret for an only son, the idea of failure will never occur to him.
When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.
Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.
First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.
Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.
Martyrdom: The only way a man can become famous without ability.
Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.
Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.
A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.
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.
It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.
I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.
Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.
Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.
Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.
Animals are my friends… and I don’t eat my friends.
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
If women were particular about men’s characters, they would never get married at all.
Clever and attractive women do not want to vote they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.
The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.
I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.
Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.
Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.
Beware of false knowledge it is more dangerous than ignorance.
What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.
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.
If all the economists were laid end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion.
I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.
Caesar was a man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.
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.
The great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life.
Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; do not outlive yourself.
Give a man health and a course to steer, and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.
The Nazi movement is in many respects one which has my warmest sympathy.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.
Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.
Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.
Beauty is all very well at first sight but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
You use a glass mirror to see your face you use works of art to see your soul.
The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.
What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn’t got any.
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men’s imperfections, and conceal your own.
Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.
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.