1 The domestic career is no more natural to all women than the military career is natural to all men.
2 At all events, as she, Ulster, cannot have the status quo, nothing remains for her but complete union or the most extreme form of Home Rule; that is, separation from both England and Ireland.
3 I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance. I find that the moment I let myself make friends with a woman, I become selfish and tyrannical.
4 Don't be so ready to defy everybody. Act as if you expected to have your own way, not as if you expected to be ordered about. The way to get on as a lady is the same as the way to get on as a servant: you've got to know your place.
5 Faith in reason as a prime motor is no longer the criterion of the sound mind, any more than faith in the Bible is the criterion of righteous intention.
6 There are two things necessary to Salvation.... Money and gunpowder.
7 There is not one Christian rule for solicitors and another for saints. Their hearts are alike; and their way of salvation is along the same road.
8 It is a monstrous thing to force a child to learn Latin or Greek or mathematics on the ground that they are an indispensable gymnastic for the mental powers. It would be monstrous even if it were true.
9 Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
10 The worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues beside it: all the other dishonours are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound, or smell of it.
11 Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful.
12 Religion is a great force: the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows don't understand is that you must get at a man through his own religion and not through yours.
13 You'll never have a quiet world til you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
14 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.
15 Blasphemy and sedition (meaning the truth about Church and State).
16 All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to children by the hands of storytellers 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 philosophers celebrate in vain. And nothing stands between the people and the fictions except the silly falsehood that the fictions are literal truths, and that there is nothing in religion but fiction.
17 Ellie: A soul is a very expensive thing to keep: much more so than a motor car. Shotover: Is it? How much does your soul eat? Ellie: Oh, a lot. It eats music and pictures and books and mountains and lakes and beautiful things to wear and nice people to be with.
18 There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen 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; he bullies you on manly principles; he supports his king on loyal principles and cuts off his king's head on republican principles. His watchword is always Duty; and he never forgets that the nation which lets its duty get on the opposite side to its interest is lost.
19 No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.
20 All industries are brought under the control of such people [film producers] by Capitalism. If the capitalists let themselves be seduced from their pursuit of profits to the enchantments of art, they would be bankrupt before they knew where they were. You cannot combine the pursuit of money with the pursuit of art.
21 Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.
22 Hypocrisy ... is only bad when it is improperly used.
23 Social questions are too sectional, too topical, too temporal to move a man to the mighty effort which is needed to produce great poetry. Prison reform may nerve Charles Reade to produce an effective and businesslike prose melodrama; but it could never produce Hamlet, Faust, or Peer Gynt.
24 When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
25 Even to this day it is easier than it ought to be for me to get a rise out of an American by telling him something about himself which is equally true about every human being on the face of the globe. He at once resents this as a disparagement and an assertion on my part that people in other parts of the globe are not like that, and are loftily superior to such weaknesses.
26 The more reasonable a student was in mathematics, the more unreasonable she was in the affairs of real life, concerning which few trustworthy postulates have yet been ascertained.
27 I do not, like the Fundamentalists, believe that creation stopped six thousand years ago after a week of hard work. Creation is going on all the time.
28 A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.
29 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.
30 Vivie: Oh! have I been behaving unconventionally? Praed: Oh no: oh dear no. At least not conventionally unconventionally, you understand.
31 Hollywood keeps before its child audiences a string of glorified young heroes, everyone of whom is an unhesitating and violent Anarchist. His one answer to everything that annoys him or disparages his country or his parents or his young lady or his personal code of manly conduct is to give the offender a "sock" in the jaw.... My observation leads me to believe that it is not the virtuous people who are good at socking jaws.
32 What is any respectable girl brought up to do but to catch some rich man's fancy and get the benefit of his money by marrying him?—as if a marriage ceremony could make any difference in the right or wrong of the thing!
33 There is a disease to which plays as well as men become liable with advancing years. In men it is called doting, in plays dating. The more topical the play the more it dates.
34 Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?
35 A contract for better for worse is a contract that should not be tolerated.
36 If it could be proved today that not one of the miracles of Jesus actually occurred, that proof would not invalidate a single one of his didactic utterances; and conversely, if it could be proved that not only did the miracles actually occur, but that he had wrought a thousand other miracles a thousand times more wonderful, not a jot of weight would be added to his doctrine.
37 All great truths begin as blasphemies.
38 Edith: Does anybody want me to flatter and be untruthful? Hotchkiss: Well, since you ask me, I do. Surely it's the very first qualification for tolerable social intercourse.
39 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.
40 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.
41 Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn't really hurt.
42 I must remind you that our credulity is not to be measured by the truth of the things we believe. When men believed that the earth was flat, they were not credulous: they were using their common sense, and, if asked to prove that the earth was flat, would have said simply, "Look at it." Those who refuse to believe that it is round are exercising a wholesome skepticism.
43 Martyrdom ... is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.
44 The law is equal before all of us; but we are not all equal before the law. Virtually there is one law for the rich and another for the poor, one law for the cunning and another for the simple, one law for the forceful and another for the feeble, one law for the ignorant and another for the learned, one law for the brave and another for the timid, and within family limits one law for the parent and no law at all for the child.
45 Why not give Christianity a trial?
46 There is nothing more dangerous than the conscience of a bigot.
47 Man can climb to the highest summits; but he cannot dwell there long.
48 What right has any human being to talk of bringing up a child? You do not bring up a tree or a plant. It brings itself up. You have to give it a fair chance by tilling the soil.
49 As people get their opinions so largely from the newspapers they read, the corruption of the schools would not matter so much if the Press were free. But the Press is not free. As it costs at least a quarter of a million of money to establish a daily newspaper in London, the newspapers are owned by rich men. And they depend on the advertisements of other rich men. Editors and journalists who express opinions in print that are opposed to the interests of the rich are dismissed and replaced by subservient ones.
50
You are all alike, you respectable people. You can't tell me the bursting strain of a ten-inch gun, which is a very simple matter; but you all think you can tell me the bursting strain of a man under temptation. You daren't handle high explosives; but you're all ready to handle honesty and truth and justice and the whole duty of man, and kill one another at that game. What a country! What a world!
51 In my dreams is a country where the State is the Church and the Church the people: three in one and one in three. It is a commonwealth in which work is play and play is life: three in one and one in three. It is a temple in which the priest is the worshiper and the worshiper the worshipped: three in one and one in three. It is a godhead in which all life is human and all humanity divine: three in one and one in three.
52 We must reform society before we can reform ourselves.
53 Only where there is pecuniary equality can the distinction of merit stand out.
54 You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living.
55 He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
56 Every dream is a prophecy: every jest is an earnest in the womb of Time.
57 A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
58 I can't talk religion to a man with bodily hunger in his eyes.
59 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.
60 Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.
61 Laws, religions, creeds, and systems of ethics, instead of making society better than its best unit, make it worse than its average unit, because they are never up to date.
62 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.
63 If parents would only realize how they bore their children!
64 Better see rightly on a pound a week than squint on a million.
65 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.
66 The British blockade won the war; but the wonder is that the British blockhead did not lose it. I suppose the enemy was no wiser. War is not a sharpener of wits.
67 Whenever I see the word Operation, especially Trifling Operation, I at once write off the patient as dead.
68 During the Suffragette revolt of 1913 I ... [urged] that what was needed was not the vote, but a constitutional amendment enacting that all representative bodies shall consist of women and men in equal numbers, whether elected or nominated or coopted or registered or picked up in the street like a coroner's jury. In the case of elected bodies the only way of effecting this is by the Coupled Vote. The representative unit must not be a man or a woman but a man and a woman.
69 I must ... warn my readers that my attacks are directed against themselves, not against my stage figures.
70 The art of manipulating public opinion, which is a necessary art for the democratic politician, and, like other arts, is sometimes practised with greater virtuosity by knaves than by honest men (who are apt to disdain it), has a different technique in different countries. For instance, in England we excel in whitewashing: in America they excel in tarring and feathering. We strain our nerves and stretch our consciences to avoid a scandal: Americans do the same to make one.
71 The weakness of the man who, when his theory works out into a flagrant contradiction of the facts, concludes "So much the worse for the facts: let them be altered," instead of "So much the worse for my theory."
72 A country where every citizen is free to suppress liberty.
73 A man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full; so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child again.
74 I believe in Michael Angelo, 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.
75 It's a dangerous thing to be married right up to the hilt, like my daughter's husband. The man is at home all day, like a damned soul in hell.
76 I have to get your room ready for you: to sweep and dust, to fetch and carry. How could that degrade me if it did not degrade you to have it done for you?
77 Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.
78 A book is like a child: it is easier to bring it into the world than to control it when it is launched there.
79 I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.
80 There is the eternal war between those who are in the world for what they can get out of it and those who are in the world to make it a better place for everybody to live in.
81 You can be as romantic as you please about love, Hector; but you mustn't be romantic about money.
82
The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
83 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.
84 Most married couples spend the whole day apart, the woman in the house, the man in the office or study or workshop.
85 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.
86 The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.
87 Shirley: I wouldn't have your conscience, not for all your income. Undershaft: I wouldn't have your income, not for all your conscience.
88 Whenever an obviously well founded statement is made in England by a person specially well acquainted with the facts, that unlucky person is instantly and frantically contradicted by all the people who obviously know nothing about it.
89 If you value a man's regard, strive with him. As to liking, you like your newspaper—and despise it.
90 The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier: the manners and habits of a duke would cost a city clerk his situation.
91 All professions are conspiracies against the laity.
92 I was a cannibal for twenty-five years. For the rest I have been a vegetarian.
93 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?
94 Undershaft: Alcohol is a very necessary article. It heals the sick—Barbara: It does nothing of the sort. Undershaft: Well, it assists the doctor: that is perhaps a less questionable way of putting it. It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.
95 Whenever you wish to do anything against the law, Cicely, always consult a good solicitor first.
96 Anything that makes you laugh. But the finest sort draws a tear along with the laugh.
97 A veteran journalist ... has never had time to think twice before he writes.
98 All men mean well.
99 When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.
100 It has taken me nearly 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; and I am not sure that I am not still regarded as a suspicious character in some quarters.
101 The great advantage of a hotel is that it's a refuge from home life.
102 The law of God is a law of change, and ... when the Churches set themselves against change as such, they are setting themselves against the law of God.
103 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.
104 In Ireland they try to make a cat cleanly by rubbing its nose in its own filth. Mr. Joyce has tried the same treatment on the human subject. I hope it may prove successful.
105 The sex illusion is not a fixed quantity: not what mathematicians call a constant. It varies from zero in my wife's case to madness in that of our stepsister.
106 Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation.
107 A third variety of drama ... begins as tragedy with scraps of fun in it ... and ends in comedy without mirth in it, the place of mirth being taken by a more or less bitter and critical irony.
108 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.
109 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.
110 I don't want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady.
111 That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms.
112 My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.
113 A miracle, my friend, is an event which creates faith. That is the purpose and nature of miracles. They may seem very wonderful to the people who witness them, and very simple to those who perform them. That does not matter: if they confirm or create faith they are true miracles.
114 The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.
115 Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
116 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.
117 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.
118 The man who pretends that the distribution of income in this country reflects the distribution of ability or character is an ignoramus. The man who says that it could by any possible political device be made to do so is an unpractical visionary. But the man who says that it ought to do so is something worse than an ignoramous and more disastrous than a visionary: he is, in the profoundest Scriptural sense of the word, a fool.
119 We are compelled by the theory of God's already achieved perfection to make Him a devil as well as a god, because of the existence of evil. The god of love, if omnipotent and omniscient, must be the god of cancer and epilepsy as well.... Whoever admits that anything living is evil must either believe that God is malignantly capable of creating evil, or else believe that God has made many mistakes in His attempts to make a perfect being.
