299 quotes
The centre of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel.
Twelve Types (1903)
He is only a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of the Conservative.
Varied Types (1903)
You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.
Tremendous Trifles (1955)
Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction ... for fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.
The Club of Queer Trades (1905)
First, the egoist calls life a war without mercy, and then he takes the greatest possible trouble to drill his enemies in war. To preach egoism is to practise altruism.
Orthodoxy (1908)
There runs a strange law through the length of human history — that men are continually tending to undervalue their environment, to undervalue their happiness, to undervalue themselves.
The Defendant (1901)
Monotony has nothing to do with a place; monotony, either in its sensation or its infliction, is simply the quality of a person. There are no dreary sights; there are only dreary sightseers.
All injustice begins in the mind. And anomalies accustom the mind to the idea of unreason and untruth.
All Things Considered (1908)
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.
The Flying Inn (1914)
The Puritan is only strong enough to stiffen; the Catholic is strong enough to relax.
George Bernard Shaw (1909)
Thieves respect property; they merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.
I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.
The one stream of poetry which is continually flowing is slang.
The Defendant (1901)
Whatever the word "great" means, Dickens was what it means.
Charles Dickens (1906)
Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
Arts magazine: Vol. 1 (1926)
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
What's Wrong With The World (1910)
All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
The Defendant (1901)
Strong gongs groaning as the drums beat far.
Poems (1917)
Precisely because our political speeches are meant to be reported, they are not worth reporting. Precisely because they are carefully designed to be read, nobody reads them.
All Things Considered (1908)