Best 17 quotes in «shaw quotes» category

The weak may not be admired and hero-worshipped; but they are by no means disliked or shunned; and they never seem to have the least difficulty in marrying people who are too good for them. They may fail in emergencies; but life is not one long emergency: it is mostly a string of situations for which no exceptional strength is needed, and with which even rather weak people can cope if they have a stronger partner to help them out.

Ten times a day I am compelled to reflect on my past life ... and I can never justify to myself the spending of four years on dramatic criticism. I have sworn an oath to endure no more of it. Never again will I cross the threshold of a theatre. The subject is exhausted; and so am I. I am off duty forever, and am going to sleep.

Those who can, teach; those who can't, criticize.

They rode in a cab to the rendezvous spot. It was a warehouse, which didn't surprise Shaw. "It's usually a damn warehouse," he said to Reggie.

When a beautiful blonde asks, you don't say no.

A Photographer is limited to some types of Photography. An Artist is able to do any types of photography. It's just a matter of choice and feelings.

When I visited George Bernard Shaw, in 1948, at his home in Aylot, a suburb of London, he was extremely anxious for me to tell him all that I knew about Ingersoll. During the course of the conversation, he told me that Ingersoll had made a tremendous impression upon him, and had exercised an influence upon him probably greater than that of any other man. He seemed particularly anxious to impress me with the importance of Ingersoll's influence upon his intellectual endeavors and accomplishments. In view of this admission, what percentage of the greatness of Shaw belongs to Ingersoll? If Ingersoll's influence upon so great an intellect as George Bernard Shaw was that extensive, what must have been his influence upon others? What seed of wisdom did he plant into the minds of others, and what accomplishments of theirs should be attributed to him? The world will never know. What about the countless thousands from whom he lifted the clouds of darkness and fear, and who were emancipated from the demoralizing dogmas and creeds of ignorance and superstition? What will be Ingersoll's influence upon the minds of future generations, who will come under the spell of his magic words, and who will be guided into the channels of human betterment by the unparalleled example of his courageous life? The debt the world owes Robert G. Ingersoll can never be paid.

You don’t rewrite it, censor it, or edit it, to suit some warped view you have of the past and your own present.

You’re scared,” he said quietly. “Scared?” I scoffed. “Of what?” “Of anything real. And what we have is real. You love me and it terrifies you.” “I don’t love you,” I lied. He grabbed my face then, dragging me closer with both hands. “You love me. I know you do. I know it because I can see it in your eyes . . . in the way you look at me.” He inhaled. “It’s the same way I look at you.

And he has guns and dogs that would make the Hound of Baskervilles seem like a bleeding Pekinese.

Shaw didn't answer, He didn't know anything, not for sure. But what he did have was an instict that almost never led him down the wrong path. And every inner warning signal he had was blaring away.

A smart man understood that victory was not inevitable. An even smarter man knew that defeat was never really total if you figured out how to handle the aftermath with skill and just the right spin. And the smartest men of all, even when they lost, they actually won.

If an imaginative boy has a sufficiently rich mother who has intelligence, personal grace, dignity of character without harshness, and a cultivated sense of the best art of her time to enable her to make her house beautiful, she sets a standard for him against which very few women can struggle, besides effecting for him a disengagement of his affections, his sense of beauty, and his idealism from his specifically sexual impulses.

It would actually constitute more than a miracle, he realised. It would take divine intervention plus luck, plus some unknown element of cosmic wizardry.

Loyalty in a critic is corruption.

HIGGINS [sitting down beside her] Rubbish! you shall marry an ambassador. You shall marry the Governor-General of India or the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, or somebody who wants a deputy-queen. I'm not going to have my masterpiece thrown away on Freddy. LIZA. You think I like you to say that. But I haven't forgot what you said a minute ago; and I won't be coaxed round as if I was a baby or a puppy. If I can't have kindness, I'll have independence. HIGGINS. Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth. LIZA [rising determinedly] I'll let you see whether I'm dependent on you. If you can preach, I can teach. I'll go and be a teacher. HIGGINS. What'll you teach, in heaven's name? LIZA. What you taught me. I'll teach phonetics. HIGGINS. Ha! Ha! Ha!

I am sorry to have to introduce the subject of Christmas into these articles. It is an indecent subject; a cruel, gluttonous subject; a drunken, disorderly subject; a wasteful, disastrous, subject; a wicked, cadging, lying, filthy, blashphemous, and demoralizing subject. Christmas is forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press: on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred; and any one who looked back to it would be turned into a pillar of greasy sausages.