Background Image

...

No Child Should Be Brought Up To Suppose That Its Food And Clothes Come Down From Heaven Or Are Miraculously Conjured From Empty Space By Papa. Loathsome As We Have Made The Idea Of Duty (like The Idea Of Work) We Must Habituate Children To A Sense Of Repayable Obligation To The Community For What They Consume And Enjoy, And Inculcate The Repayment As A Point Of Honor.

-George Bernard Shaw

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

No Child Should Be

George Bernard Shaw

...

No Child Should Be Brought Up To Suppose That Its Food And Clothes Come Down From Heaven Or Are Miraculously Conjured From Empty Space By Papa. Loathsome As We Have Made The Idea Of Duty (like The Idea Of Work) We Must Habituate Children To A Sense Of Repayable Obligation To The Community For What They Consume And Enjoy, And Inculcate The Repayment As A Point Of Honor.

Views: 6

Topic

More From George Bernard Shaw

It Is One Of The Mysterious Ways Of Allah To Make Women Troublesome When He Makes Them Beautiful.

A Man Who Desires To Get Married Should Know Everything Or Nothing.

Importance Of Being Earnest

Audacious Ribald: Your Laughter Will Finish In Hideous Boredom Before Morning.

The English Have No Respect For Their Language, And Will Not Teach Their Children To Speak It.

There Is, On The Whole, Nothing On Earth Intended For Innocent People So Horrible As A School. To Begin With, It Is A Prison. But In Some Respects More Cruel Than A Prison. In A Prison, For Instance, You Are Not Forced To Read Books Written By The Warders And The Governor. . . .in The Prison You Are Not Forced To Sit Listening To Turnkeys Discoursing Without Charm Or Interest On Subjects That They Don't Understand And Don't Care About, And Therefore Incapable Of Making You Understand Or Care About. In A Prison They May Torture Your Body; But They Do Not Torture Your Brains.

Freedom, My Good Girl, Means Being Able To Count On How Other People Will Behave.

A Life Spent Making Mistakes Is Not Only More Honorable, But More Useful Than A Life Spent Doing Nothing.

Nothing Can Save Us From A Perpetual Headlong Fall Into A Bottomless Abyss But A Solid Footing Of Dogma; And We No Sooner Agree To That Than We Find That The Only Trustworthy Dogma Is That There Is No Dogma.

My Method Is To Take The Utmost Trouble To Find The Right Thing To Say, And Then To Say It With The Utmost Levity.

Public Speaking

In Your Salvation Shelter I Saw Poverty, Misery, Cold And Hunger. You Gave Them Bread And Treacle And Dreams Of Heaven. I Give From Thirty Shillings A Week To Twelve Thousand A Year. They Find Their Own Dreams; But I Look After The Drainage.

Capitalism Justified Itself And Was Adopted As An Economic Principle On The Express Ground That It Provides Selfish Motives For Doing Good, And That Human Beings Will Do Nothing Except For Selfish Motives

The Worst Sin... Is... To Be Indifferent.

Vivisection Is A Social Evil Because If It Advances Human Knowledge, It Does So At The Expense Of Human Character.

Journalists Are Too Poorly Paid In This Country To Know Anything That Is Fit For Publication.

Of The Three Official Objects Of Our Prison System: Vengeance, Deterrence, And Reformation Of The Criminal, Only One Is Achieved; And That Is The One Which Is Nakedly Abominable.

The Conversion Of Paul Was No Conversion At All; It Was Paul Who Converted The Religion That Has Raised One Man Above Sin And Death.

That Is The Whole Secret Of Successful Fighting. Get Your Enemy At A Disadvantage; And Never, On Any Account, Fight Him On Equal Terms.

Build A System That Even A Fool Can Use, And Only A Fool Will Want To Use It.

Use It Or Lose It

Hell Is Full Of Musical Amateurs.

Indifference Is The Essence Of Inhumanity.

Do Not Do Unto Others As You Expect They Should Do Unto You. Their Tastes May Not Be The Same.

We Are The Living Graves Of Murdered Beasts.

Vegetarian Diet

The Righteous Man Takes His Life In His Hand Whenever He Utters The Truth.

My Situation Is A Solemn One: Life Is Offered To Me On The Condition Of Eating Beefsteaks. But Death Is Better Than Cannibalism. My Will Contains Directions For My Funeral, Which Will Be Followed, Not By Mourning Coaches, But By Oxen, Sheep, Flocks Of Poultry, And A Small Traveling Aquarium Of Live Fish, All Wearing White Scarves In Honor Of The Man Who Perished Rather Than Eat His Fellow Creatures. It Will Be, Without The Exception Of Noah's Ark, The Most Remarkable Thing Of Its Kind Ever Seen.

I Claim To Be A Conscientiously Immoral Writer.

Compassion Is The Fellow-feeling Of The Unsound.

We Educate One Another; And We Cannot Do This If Half Of Us Consider The Other Half Not Good Enough To Talk To.

Not Good Enough

A Man Of My Spiritual Intensity Does Not Eat Corpses.

All Autobiographies Are Lies. I Do Not Mean Unconscious, Unintentional Lies: I Mean Deliberate Lies.

Some People Look At The World And Say 'why?' Some People Look At The World And Say 'why Not?'

Positive Thinking

Get Married, But Never To A Man Who Is Home All Day.

When You Loved Me I Gave You The Whole Sun And Stars To Play With. I Gave You Eternity In A Single Moment, Strength Of The Mountains In One Clasp Of Your Arms, And The Volume Of All The Seas In One Impulse Of Your Soul.

The Truth Is, Hardly Any Of Us Have Ethical Energy Enough For More Than One Really Inflexible Point Of Honor.

Love Is An Appetite Which, Like All Other Appetites, Is Destroyed For The Moment By Its Gratification.

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.

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.

An Idea That No One Believes Can Not Be Proved Too Often.

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.

Those Who Won't Hesitate To Vivisect, Won't Hesitate To Lie About It As Well.

God Is On The Side Of The Big Battalions.

Nowadays A Parlor Maid As Ignorant As Queen Victoria Was When She Came To The Throne Would Be Classed As Mentally Defective.

Keep Away From Books And From Men Who Get Their Ideas From Books, And Your Own Books Will Always Be Fresh.

Marriage Is Popular Because It Combines The Maximum Of Temptation With The Maximum Of Opportunity.

It Is Most Unwise For People In Love To Marry.

The Best Bought-up Children Are Those Who Have Seen Thier Parents As They Are. Hypocrisy Is Not The First Duty Of A Parent.

General Consultant To Mankind.

All Progress Means War With Society.

Progress Of Society

Heaven, As Conventionally Conceived, Is A Place So Inane, So Dull, So Useless, So Miserable That Nobody Has Ever Ventured To Describe A Whole Day In Heaven, Though Plenty Of People Have Described A Day At The Seaside.

The Real Moment Of Success Is Not The Moment Apparent To The Crowd.

I'm Sick Of All The Reasonable People: They See All The Reasons For Doing Nothing

In The Arts Of Life Main Invents Nothing; But In The Arts Of Death He Outdoes Nature Herself, And Produces By Chemistry And Machinery All The Slaughter Of Plague, Pestilence And Famine. ... There Is Nothing In Man's Industrial Machinery But His Greed And Sloth: His Heart Is In His Weapons.

The Fact Is That The Intrinsic Worth Of The Book, Play Or Whatever The Author Is Trying To Sell Is The Least, Last Factor In The The Whole Transaction.

It's All That The Young Can Do For The Old, To Shock Them And Keep Them Up To Date.

I Am A Christian. That Obliges Me To Be A Communist.

The Greatest Evils And The Worst Of Crimes Is Poverty; Our First Duty, A Duty To Which Every Other Consideration Should Be Sacrificed, Is Not To Be Poor.

The Universal Regard For Money Is The One Hopeful Fact In Our Civilization.

We Are Made Wise Not By The Recollection Of Our Past, But By The Responsibility For Our Future.

Would The World Ever Have Been Made If Its Maker Had Been Afraid Of Making Trouble?making Life Means Making Trouble. There’s Only One Way Of Escaping Trouble; And That’s Killing Things.

There Is No Sincerer Love Than The Love Of Food.

Never Forget That If You Leave Your Law To Judges And Your Religion To Bishops, You Will Presently Find Yourself Without Either Law Or Religion.

Finding Yourself

Has Fear Ever Held A Man Back From Anything He Really Wanted?

A Critic Recently Described Me, With Deadly Acuteness, As Having 'a Kindly Dislike Of My Fellow-creatures.' Perhaps Dread Would Have Been Nearer The Mark Than Dislike; For Man Is The Only Animal Of Which I Am Thoroughly And Cravenly Afraid.

A Pornographic Novelist Is One Who Exploits The Sexual Instinct As A Prostitute Does. A Legitimate Sex Novel Elucidates It Or Brings Out Its Poetry, Tragedy, Or Comedy.

Democracy Means The Organization Of Society For The Benefit And At The Expense Of Everybody Indiscriminately And Not For The Benefit Of A Privileged Class.

Don't Wait For The Right Opportunity: Create It.

You're Only A Beginner; And What You Think Is Love, And Interest, And All That, Is Not Real Love At All: Three Quarters Of It Is Only Unsatisfied Curiosity.

A Man Of Great Common Sense And Good Taste - Meaning Thereby A Man Without Originality Or Moral Courage.

When You Find Something Funny Search It For Hidden Truth.

Treat A Friend As A Person Who May Someday Become Your Enemy; An Enemy As A Person Who May Someday Become Your Friend.

To Withhold Deserved Praise Lest It Should Make Its Object Conceited Is As Dishonest As To Withhold Payment Of A Just Debt Lest Your Creditor Should Spend The Money Badly.

If History Repeats Itself, And The Unexpected Always Happens, How Incapable Must Man Be Of Learning From Experience.

A Man's Own Self Is The Last Person To Believe In Him, And Is Harder To Cheat Than The Rest Of The World.

The Danger Of Crippling Thought, The Danger Of Obstructing The Formation Of The Public Mind By Specially Suppressing ... Representations Is Far Greater Than Any Real Danger That There Is From Such Representations.

I Find That Socialism Is Often Misunderstood By Its Least Intelligent Supporters And Opponents To Mean Simply Unrestrained Indulgence Of Our Natural Propensity To Heave Bricks At Respectable Persons.

Reason Enslaves All Whose Minds Are Not Strong Enough To Master Her.

An English Army Led By An Irish General: That Might Be A Match For A French Army Led By An Italian General.

An Asylum For The Sane Would Be Empty In America.

An Actress Is Not A Lady; At Least, When She Is, She Is Not An Actress.

You Are All Fundamentalists With A Top Dressing Of Science. That Is Why You Are The Stupidest Of Conservatives And Reactionists In Politics And The Most Bigoted Of Obstructionists In Science Itself. When It Comes To Getting A Move On You Are All Of The Same Opinion: Stop It, Flog It, Hang It, Dynamite It, Stamp It Out.

I Sing, Not Arms And The Hero, But The Philosophic Man: He Who Seeks In Contemplation To Discover The Inner Will Of The World, Ininvention To Discover The Means Of Fulfilling That Will, And In Action To Do That Will By The So-discovered Means.

While We Ourselves Are The Living Graves Of Murdered Animals, How Can We Expect Any Ideal Living Conditions On This Earth?

The Lesson Intended By An Author Is Hardly Ever The Lesson The World Chooses To Learn From His Book.

It Was From Handel That I Learned That Style Consists In Force Of Assertion.

A Conquered Nation Is Like A Man With Cancer: He Can Think Of Nothing Else.

If We Have Come To Think That The Nursery And The Kitchen Are The Natural Sphere Of A Woman, We Have Done So Exactly As English Children Come To Think That A Cage Is The Natural Sphere Of A Parrot: Because They Have Never Seen One Anywhere Else.

If There Was Nothing Wrong In The World There Wouldn't Be Anything For Us To Do.

The Roulette Table Pays Nobody Except Him That Keeps It. Nevertheless A Passion For Gaming Is Common, Though A Passion For Keeping Roulette Tables Is Unknown.

The Public Want Actresses, Because They Think All Actresses Bad. They Don't Want Music Or Poetry Because They Know That Both Are Good. So Actors And Actresses Thrive And Poets And Composers Starve.

There Is Nothing That Can Be Changed More Completely Than Human Nature When The Job Is Taken In Hand Early Enough.

If You Cannot Get Rid Of The Family Skeleton, You May As Well Make It Dance.

My Main Reason For Adopting Literature As A Profession Was That, As The Author Is Never Seen By His Clients, He Need Not Dress Respectably.

In Gambling The Many Must Lose In Order That The Few May Win.

If You Can't Get Rid Of The Skeleton In Your Closet, You'd Best Teach It To Dance.

And So, To The End Of History, Murder Shall Breed Murder, Always In The Name Of Right And Honor And Peace, Until The Gods Are Tired Of Blood And Create A Race That Can Understand.

An American Has No Sense Of Privacy. He Does Not Know What It Means.there Is No Such Thing In The Country.

Deep Knowledge Is Not Knowledge Of The Thing Itself, But Knowledge Of A Thing Like The Thing. Then, You Gain Not One Knowledge, But Two Knowledges. Of The Thing. And Of The Original Thing With Is Like The Thing. Which Is The Barbarism Of The Privileged Class.

When The Military Man Approaches, The World Locks Up Its Spoons And Packs Off Its Womankind.

Those Who Minister To Poverty And Disease Are Accomplices In The Two Worst Of All The Crimes.

Changeable Women Are More Endurable That Monotonous Ones; They Are Sometimes Murdered But Never Deserted.

Both Optimists And Pessimists Contribute To Society. The Optimist Invents The Aeroplane, The Pessimist The Parachute.

Who Is This Baby Ruth? And What Does She Do?

If Women Were As Fastidious As Men, Morally Or Physically, There Would Be An End Of The Race.

Heartbreak Is Life Educating Us.

The Savage Bows Down To Idols Of Wood And Stone, The Civilized Man To Idols Of Flesh And Blood

Principles Without Programs Are Platitudes.

O Lord! I Don't Know Which Is The Worst Of The Country, The Walking Or The Sitting At Home With Nothing To Do.

A Contract For Better For Worse Is A Contract That Should Not Be Tolerated.

A Genius Is A Person Who Is Seeing Further And Probing Deeper Than Other People Has A Different Set Of Ethical Valuations From Their And Has Energy Enough To Give Effect To This Extra Vision And Its Valuations In Whatever Manner Best Suits His Or Her

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!

God Has Given Us A World That Nothing But Our Own Folly Keeps From Being A Paradise.

Now Of All The Idealist Abominations That Make Society Pestiferous I Doubt If There Be Any So Mean As That Of Forcing Self-sacrifice On A Woman Under The Pretense That She Likes It.

We Don't Stop Playing Because We Grow Old; We Grow Old Because We Stop Playing.

Murder And Capital Punishment Are Not Opposites That Cancel One Another, But Similars That Breed Their Kind. It Is The Deed That Teaches Not The Name We Give It.

Lack Of Money Is The Root Of Of All Evil.

Greatest Wealth

We Should Find Ourselves Committed To Killing A Great Many People Whom We Now Leave Living, And To Leave Living A Great Many People Whom We At Present Kill. We Should Have To Get Rid Of All Ideas About Capital Punishment.

Opera Is When A Tenor And Soprano Want To Make Love, But Are Prevented From Doing So By A Baritone.

The Trouble With The Media Is That It Seems Unable To Distinguish Between The End Of The World And A Bicycle Accident.

Be Like The Sun And Meadow, Which Are Not In The Least Concerned About The Coming Winter.

Just As I Cannot Remember Any Time When I Could Not Read And Write, I Cannot Remember Any Time When I Did Not Exercise My Imagination In Daydreams About Women.

My Father Must Have Had Some Elementary Education For He Could Read And Write And Keep Accounts Inaccurately

It's Usually Pointed Out That Women Are Not Fit For Political Power, And Ought Not To Be Trusted With A Vote Because They Are Politically Ignorant, Socially Prejudiced, Narrow-minded, And Selfish. True Enough, But Precisely The Same Is True Of Men!

The Salvation Of The World Depends On The Men Who Will Not Take Evil Good-humouredly, And Whose Laughter Destroys The Fool Instead Of Encouraging Him.

There Are Scores Of Thousands Of Human Insects Who Are Ready At A Moment's Notice To Reveal The Will Of God On Every Possible Subject

Vulgarity In A King Flatters The Majority Of The Nation.

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.

Death Is For Many Of Us The Gate Of Hell; But We Are Inside On The Way Out, Not Outside On The Way In.

English Is The Easiest Language To Speak Badly.

Beware Of False Knowledge; It Is More Dangerous Than Ignorance.

We Should All Be Obliged To Appear Before A Board Every Five Years And Justify Our Existence... On Pain Of Liquidation.

Grain By Grain, A Loaf. Stone Upon Stone, A Palace.

All Progress Is Due To The Unreasonable Person.

Only Lawyers And Mental Defectives Are Automatically Exempt For Jury Duty.

In Heaven An Angel Is Nobody In Particular.

Words Are Only Postage Stamps Delivering The Object For You To Unwrap

Don't Waste Time Collecting Other People's Autographs; Rather Devote It To Making Your Own Autograph Worth Collecting.

Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions, Not With Bad Ones. All Men Mean Well.

If You Teach A Man Anything, He Will Never Learn.

With The Single Exception Of Homer, There Is No Eminent Writer, Not Even Sir Walter Scott, Whom I Can Despise So Entirely As I Despise Shakespeare When I Measure My Mind Against His. . . . It Would Positively Be A Relief To Me To Dig Him Up And Throw Stones At Him.

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.

Blasphemy And Sedition (meaning The Truth About Church And State).

Church And State

The Politician Who Once Had To Learn To Flatter Kings Has Now To Learn How To Fascinate, Amuse, Coax, Humbug, Frighten, Or Otherwise Strike The Fancy Of The Electorate.

When God Created Man And Woman, He Did Not Take A Patent. That's Why Any Imbecile Has Been Able To Do So Ever Since.

Only In The Problem Play Is There Any Real Drama, Because Drama Is No Mere Setting Up Of The Camera To Nature: It Is The Presentation In Parable Of The Conflict Between Man's Will And His Environment: In A Word, Of Problem.

What I Say Today Everybody Will Say Tomorrow, Though They Will Not Remember Who Put It Into Their Heads. Indeed They Will Be Right For I Never Remember Who Puts Things Into My Head : It Is The Zeitgeist.

Criminals Do Not Die By The Hands Of The Law. They Die By The Hands Of Other Men.

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.

Religion Is A Good Invention In Times Of Stress.

If At Age 20 You Are Not A Communist Then You Have No Heart. If At Age 30 You Are Not A Capitalist Then You Have No Brains.

I Appeal To The Chemists To Discover A Humane Gas That Will Kill Instantly And Painlessly. In Short- A Gentlemanly Gas Deadly By All Means, But Humane, Not Cruel.

The Schoolmaster Is The Person Who Takes The Children Off The Parents' Hands For A Consideration. That Is To Say, He Establishes A Child Prison, Engages A Number Of Employee Schoolmasters As Turnkeys, And Covers Up The Essential Cruelty And Unnaturalness Of The Situation By Torturing The Children If They Do Not Learn, And Calling This Process, Which Is Within The Capacity Of Any Fool Or Blackguard, By The Sacred Name Of Teaching.

I Also Made It Quite Clear That Socialism Means Equality Of Income Or Nothing, And That Under Socialism You Would Not Be Allowed To Be Poor. You Would Be Forcibly Feed, Clothed, Lodged, Taught, And Employed Whether You Like It Or Not. If It Were Discovered That You Had Not Character Enough To Be Worth All This Trouble, You Might Possibly Be Executed In A Kindly Manner; But Whilst You Were Permitted To Live You Would Have To Live Well.

Jesus Remains Unshaken As The Practical Man; And We Stand Exposed As The Fools, The Blunderers, The Unpractical Visionaries.

An Irishman's Imagination Never Lets Him Alone, Never Convinces Him, Never Satisfies Him; But It Makes Him That He Can't Face Reality Nor Deal With It Nor Handle It Nor Conquer It: He Can Only Sneer At Them That Do, And Be 'agreeable To Strangers', Like A Good-for-nothing Woman On The Streets.

There Is A Terrible Truthfulness About Photography That Sometimes Makes A Thing Look Ridiculous.

Love Is A Simple Thing And A Deep Thing: It Is An Act Of Life And Not An Illusion. Art Is An Illusion.

Man Can Climb To The Highest Summits, But He Cannot Dwell There Long.

Science Can Never Solve One Problem Without Raising Ten More Problems.

The Quality Of A Play Is The Quality Of Its Ideas.

Nothing Is Ever Accomplished By A Reasonable Man.

To Be In Hell Is To Drift; To Be In Heaven Is To Steer.

People Who Are Hard, Grasping And Always Ready To Take Advantage Of Their Neighbors Become Very Rich.

We Know There Is Intention And Purpose In The Universe, Because There Is Intention And Purpose In Us.

If You Cannot Attain Knowledge Without Torturing A Dog, You Must Do Without Knowledge.

The British Are Apt To Make Merits Of Their Stupidities, And To Represent Their Various Incapacities As Points Of Good Breeding.

You May Well Ask Me Why...i Took The Time To Write [books]. I Can Only Reply That I Do Not Know. There Was No Why About It. I Had To: That Was All.

The British Churchgoer Prefers A Severe Preacher Because He Thinks A Few Home Truths Will Do His Neighbors No Harm.

Discussing Vaccination With A Doctor Is Like Discussing Vegetarianism With A Butcher.

They Tell Me That So-and-so, Who Does Not Write Prefaces, Is No Charlatan. Well, I Am. I First Caught The Ear Of The British Public On A Cart In Hyde Park, To The Blaring Of Brass Bands,and This . . . Because . . . I Am A Natural-born Mountebank.

Animals Are My Friends... And I Don't Eat My Friends.

Hell Is Not All Paved With Bad Intentions.

Men Trifle With Their Business And Their Politics But Never Trifle With Their Games. It Brings Truth Home To Them. They Cannot Pretend They Have Won When They Have Lost Nor That They Had A Magnificent Drive When They Foozled It. The Englishman Is At His Best On The Links And At His Worst In The Cabinet.

If Only For A Half Hour A Day, A Child Should Do Something Serviceable To The Community

The World Is Populated In The Main By People Who Should Not Exist

When I Speak Of The Case For Equality I Mean Human Equality; And That, Of Course, Can Only Mean One Thing: It Means Equality Of Income.

Only On Paper Has Humanity Yet Achieved Glory, Beauty, Truth, Knowledge, Virtue, And Abiding Love.

A Great Social Reformer.

Make Me A Beautiful Word For Doing Things Tomorrow; For That Surely Is A Great And Blessed Invention.

Justice Is Impartiality. Only Strangers Are Impartial.

I Loathe The Mess Of Mean Superstitions And Misunderstood Prophecies Which Is Still Rammed Down The Throats Of Children Under The Name Of Christianity.

Dogmatic Toleration Is Nonsense: I Would No More Tolerate The Teaching Of Calvinism To Children If I Had Power To Persecute It Than The British Raj Tolerated Suttee In India. Every Civilized Authority Must Draw A Line Between The Tolerable And The Intolerable.

If You Say That God Is Good, Great, Blessed, Wise Or Any Such Thing, The Starting Point Is This : God Is.

I Know I Began As A Passion And Have Ended As A Habit , Like All Husbands .

Virtue Consists, Not In Abstaining From Vice, But In Not Desiring It.

I Don't Know What To Say About This Book. The Experience On Which It Is Founded Is So Extraordinary, That An Honest Record Of It Should Be Preserved . . . But It Would Have Driven Me Mad; And I Am Not Sure That The Author Came Out Of It Without A Slight Derangement.

This Souls'prison We Call England.

It Is Doubtless Wise, When A Reform Is Introduced, To Try To Persuade The British Public That It Is Not A Reform At All; But Appearances Must Be Kept Up To Some Extent At Least.

Few People Think More Than Two Or Three Times A Year; I Have Made An International Reputation For Myself By Thinking Once Or Twice A Week.

The Popular Definition Of Tragedy Is Heavy Drama In Which Everyone Is Killed In The Last Act, Comedy Being Light Drama In Which Everyone Is Married In The Last Act.

No Man Fully Capable Of His Own Language Ever Masters Another.

The Medieval Doctors Of Divinity Who Did Not Pretend To Settle How Many Angels Could Dance On The Point Of A Needle Cut A Very Poor Figure As Far As Romantic Credulity Is Concerned Beside The Modern Physicists Who Have Settled To The Billionth Of A Millimetre Every Movement And Position In The Dance Of The Electrons. Not For Worlds Would I Question The Precise Accuracy Of These Calculations Or The Existence Of Electrons (whatever They May Be). The Fate Of Joan Is A Warning To Me Against Such Heresy.

If More Than Ten Percent Of The Public Likes A Painting, It Should Be Burned.

When A Lion Meets Another With A Louder Roar, The First Lion Thinks The Last A Bore.

Worst Of All, There Is No Sign Of Any Relaxation Of Antisemitism. Logically It Has Nothing To Do With Fascism. But The Human Raceis Imitative Rather Than Logical; And As Fascism Spreads Antisemitism Spreads.

My Religion? Well, My Dear, I Am A Millionaire. That Is My Religion.

There Is Only One Religion, Though There Are A Hundred Versions Of It.

I Was A Cannibal For Twenty-five Years. For The Rest I Have Been A Vegetarian.

Youth, Which Is Forgiven Everything, Forgives Itself Nothing: Age, Which Forgives Itself Everything, Is Forgiven Nothing.

You Can Lose A Man Like That By Your Own Death, But Not By His.

Death And Dying

The Great Secret, Eliza, Is Not Having Bad Manners Or Good Manners Or Any Other Particular Sort Of Manners, But Having The Same Manner For All Human Souls: In Short, Behaving As If You Were In Heaven, Where There Are No Thirdclass Carriages, And One Soul Is As Good As Another.

The Englishmen Is At His Best On The Links And At His Worst In The Cabinet.

Trending Author

Joey Lauren Adams

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Gelsey Kirkland

Marcus Aurelius

Category