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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.

-George Bernard Shaw

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The Popular Definition Of

George Bernard Shaw

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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.

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If You Leave Your Art, The World Will Beat You Back To It. The World Has Not An Ambition Worth Sharing, Or A Prize Worth Handling.

The Plain Working Truth Is That It Is Not Only Good For People To Be Shocked Occasionally, But Absolutely Necessary To The Progress Of Society That They Should Be Shocked Pretty Often.

Progress Of Society

Titles Distinguish The Mediocre, Embarrass The Superior, And Are Disgraced By The Inferior.

Money Is The Counter That Enables Life To Be Lived Socially; It Is Life As Truly As Sovereigns And Banknotes Are Money.

The Things Most People Want To Know About Are Usually None Of Their Business.

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.

My Schooling Did Me A Great Deal Of Harm And No Good Whatever; It Was Simply Dragging A Child's Soul Through The Dirt.

Assasination On The Scaffold Is The Worst Form Of Assasination, Because There It Is Invested With The Approval Of Society.

When A Heretic Wishes To Avoid Martyrdom He Speaks Of "orthodoxy, True And False" And Demonstrates That The True Is His Heresy.

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

As To Spelling The Very Frequent Word Though With Six Letters Instead Of Two, It Is Impossible To Discuss It, As It Is Outside The Range Of Common Sanity. In Comparison Such A Monstrosity As Phlegm For Flem Is Merely Disgusting.

Cruelty Would Be Delicious If One Could Only Find Some Sort Of Cruelty That Didn't Really Hurt.

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

Lack Of Money Is The Root Of Of All Evil.

Greatest Wealth

Peace Is Not Only Better Than War, But Infinitely More Arduous.

The Person Who Is Ignorant Enough To Believe That His Nourishment Depends On Meat Is In A Horrible Dilemma.

It's A Pity Youth Is Wasted On The Young.

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.

A Miracle Is An Event Which Creates Faith. That Is The Purpose And Nature Of Miracles. Frauds Deceive. An Event Which Creates Faith Does Not Deceive: Therefore It Is Not A Fraud, But A Miracle.

Why, Except As A Means Of Livelihood, A Man Should Desire To Act On The Stage When He Has The Whole World To Act In, Is Not Clear To Me.

If In The Library Of Your House You Do Not Have The Works Of The Ancient Greek Writers, Then You Live In A House With No Light.

Even If Animal Experimentation Was Proved To Be Of Value, It Would Be Morally Wrong.

A Man Who Loses His Money Gains, At The Least, Experience, And Sometimes, Something Better.

The Devil Can Quote Shakespeare For His Own Purpose.

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.

The Anti-vivisector Does Not Deny That Physiologists Must Make Experiments And Even Take Chances With New Methods. He Says That They Must Not Seek Knowledge By Criminal Methods, Just As They Must Not Make Money By Criminal Methods. He Does Not Object To Galileo Dropping Cannon Balls From The Top Of The Leaning Tower Of Pisa; But He Would Object To Shoving Off Two Dogs Or American Tourists.

You Know, Tolstoy, Like Myself, Wasn't Taken In By Superstitions Like Science And Medicine.

We Must Not Stay As We Are, Doing Always What Was Done Last Time; Or We Shall Stick In The Mud.

Nothing Is Ever Accomplished By A Reasonable Man.

Imprisonment Is As Irrevocable As Death.

The Love Of Economy Is The Root Of All Virtue.

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.

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.

The Only Power A God Can Teach Is The Power Of Doing Without Happiness.

When A Man Says Money Can Do Anything, That Settles It: He Hasn't Got Any.

Men Are Wise In Proportion, Not To Their Experience, But To Their Capacity For Experience.

Schools Must Not Become The Agencies Through Which Propaganda Advocated By Any Section Of Society Is Spread. The Method Of Control Always A Crucial Problem Should Be In Harmony With The Fundamental Values And Principles Of The States And The Entire E

Doing What Needs To Be Done May Not Make You Happy, But It Will Make You Great.

What The World Calls Originality Is Only An Unaccustomed Method Of Tickling It.

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.

Every Man Is A Revolutionist Concerning The Thing He Understands. For Example, Every Person Who Has Mastered A Profession Is A Skeptic Concerning It, And Consequently A Revolutionist.

Don't Lose Faith. Promise Yourself That You Will Be A Success Story, And I Promise You That All The Forces Of The Universe Will Unite To Come To Your Aid; You Might Not Feel Today Or For A While, But The Longer You Wait The Bigger The Prize.

Of All Human Struggles There Is None So Treacherous And Remorseless As The Struggle Between The Artist Man And The Mother Woman.

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.

No Community Has Ever Yet Passed Beyond The Initial Phases In Which Its Pugnacity And Fanaticism Enabled It To Found A Nation, And Its Cupidity To Establish And Develop A Commercial Civilization.

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

Modern Poverty Is Not The Poverty That Was Blest In The Sermon On The Mount.

Sermon On The Mount

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.

Golf Is Typical Capitalist Luncay.

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

In Your Dread Of Dictators You Established A State Of Society In Which Every Ward Boss Is A Dictator, Every Private Employer A Dictator, Every Financier A Dictator, All With The Livelihood Of The Workers At His Mercy, And No Public Responsibility.

He Who Desires A Lifetime Of Happiness With A Beautiful Woman Desires To Enjoy The Taste Of Wine By Keeping His Mouth Always Full Of It.

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

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

A Man Of Genius Is Not A Man Who Sees More Than Other Men Do. On The Contrary, It Is Very Often Found That He Is Absentminded Andobserves Much Less Than Other People.... Why Is It That The Public Have Such An Exaggerated Respect For Him--after He Is Dead? The Reason Is That The Man Of Genius Understands The Importance Of The Few Things He Sees.

The Happiness Of Credulity Is A Cheap And Dangerous Quality.

If There Is A God

A Woman Whose Face Looked As If It Had Been Made Of Sugar And Someone Had Licked It.

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.

Wise Kings Wear Shabby Clothes, And Leave The Gold Lace To The Drum Major.

Why Not Give Christianity A Trial?

Life Is A First Draft... With No Rewrite.

You Must All Know Half A Dozen People At Least Who Are No Use In This World, Who Are More Trouble Than They Are Worth. Just Put Them There And Say Sir, Or Madam, Now Will You Be Kind Enough To Justify Your Existence? If You Can't Justify Your Existence, If You're Not Pulling Your Weight In The Social Boat, If You're Not Producing As Much As You Consume Or Perhaps A Little More, Then, Clearly, We Cannot Use The Organizations Of Our Society For The Purpose Of Keeping You Alive, Because Your Life Does Not Benefit Us And It Can't Be Of Very Much Use To Yourself.

My Mother Married A Very Good Man ... And She Is Not At All Keen On My Doing The Same.

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

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.

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

The Mathematician Is Fascinated With The Marvelous Beauty Of The Forms He Constructs, And In Their Beauty He Finds Everlasting Truth.

The Great Danger Of Conversion In All Ages Has Been That When The Religion Of The High Mind Is Offered To The Lower Mind, The Lower Mind, Feeling Its Fascination Without Understanding It, And Being Incapable Of Rising To It, Drags It Down To Its Level By Degrading It.

What We Call Education And Culture Is For The Most Part Nothing But The Substitution Of Reading For Experience, Of Literature For Life, Of The Obsolete Fictitious For The Contemporary Real.

We Want A Few Mad People Now. See Where The Sane Ones Have Landed Us!

What Is Wrong With Priests And Popes Is That Instead Of Being Apostles And Saints, They Are Nothing But Empirics Who Say I Know Instead Of I Am Learning, And Pray For Credulity And Inertia As Wise Men Pray For Skepticism And Activity.

Liberty Means Responsibility. That Is Why Most Men Dread It.

Women Are Called Womanly Only When They Regard Themselves As Existing Solely For The Use Of Men.

Vitality Is A Woman Is A Blind Fury Of Creation.

The Educated Man Is A Greater Nuisance Than The Uneducated One.

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.

It Is Dangerous To Be Sincere Unless You Are Also Stupid.

What Is The Use Of Straining After An Amiable View Of Things, When A Cynical View Is Most Likely To Be The True One?.

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

Christianity Might Be A Good Thing If Anyone Ever Tried It.

Women Upset Everything. When You Let Them Into Your Life, You Find That The Woman Is Driving At One Thing And You're Driving At Another.

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.

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.

The Only Way To Avoid Being Miserable Is Not To Have Enough Leisure To Wonder Whether You Are Happy Or Not.

When Domestic Servants Are Treated As Human Beings It Is Not Worth While To Keep Them.

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.

I Try To Follow His Example, Not To Imitate Him.

If Any Religion Had A Chance Of Ruling Over England, Nay Europe Within The Next Hundred Years, It Could Be Islam.

The Ideal Love Affair Should Be Conducted By Post.

Of The Two Lots, The Woman's Lot Of Perpetual Motherhood, And The Man's Of Perpetual Babyhood, I Prefer The Man's.

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.

The Only Person Who Acts Sensibly Is My Tailor. He Takes My Measure Anew Every Time He Sees Me. Everyone Else Goes By Their Old Measurements.

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

After All, The Wrong Road Always Leads Somewhere.

Science Is Always Simple And Always Profound. It Is Only The Half-truths That Are Dangerous.

Compassion Is The Fellow-feeling Of The Unsound.

Our Laws Make Law Impossible; Our Liberties Destroy All Freedom; Our Property Is Organized Robbery; Our Morality An Impudent Hypocrisy; Our Wisdom Is Administered By Inexperienced Or Mal-experienced Dupes; Our Power Wielded By Cowards And Weaklings; And Our Honour False In All Its Points. I Am An Enemy Of The Existing Order For Good Reasons

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

I Never Expect A Soldier To Think.

I Am A Sort Of Collector Of Religions: And The Curious Thing Is That I Find I Can Believe In Them All.

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

Of All The Anti-social Vested Interests The Worst Is The Vested Interest In Ill-health.

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.

When Commenting On The Turmoil And Disorder Of The World, If The Other Planets Are Inhabited, They Must Be Using This Earth As Their Insane Asylum.

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.

Old Men Are Dangerous: It Doesn't Matter To Them What Is Going To Happen To The World.

First Really Like Is Just A Little Bit Foolishness As Well As A Lot Of Curiosity. No Actually Self-respecting Girl Would Reap The Benefits Of It.

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

A Day's Work Is A Day's Work, Neither More Nor Less, And The Man Or Woman Who Does It Needs A Day's Sustenance, A Night's Repose And Due Leisure, Whether They Be Painter Or Ploughman.

With The Exception Of Capitalism, There Is Nothing So Revolting As Revolution.

Here There Is No Hope, And Consequently No Duty, No Work, Nothing To Be Gained By Praying, Nothing To Be Lost By Doing What You Like. Hell, In Short, Is A Place Where You Have Nothing To Do But Amuse Yourself.

You Practically Do Not Use Semicolons At All. This Is A Symptom Of Mental Defectiveness, Probably Induced By Camp Life.

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.

From Mozart I Learnt To Say Important Things In A Conversational Way.

Christianity As A Specific Doctrine Was Slain With Jesus, Suddenly And Utterly. He Was Hardly Cold In His Grave, Or High In His Heaven (as You Please), Before The Apostles Dragged The Tradition Of Him Down To The Level Of The Thing It Has Remained Ever Since.

When You Prevent Me From Doing Anything I Want To Do, That Is Persecution; When I Prevent You From Doing Anything You Want To Do, That Is Law, Order, And Morals.

The Harder I Work The More I Live.

All Great Art And Literature Is Propaganda.

Stop Being Jews And Start Being Human Beings.

If A Group Of Beings From Another Planet Were To Land On Earth - Beings Who Considered Themselves As Superior To You As You Feel Yourself To Be To Other Animals - Would You Concede Them The Rights Over You That You Assume Over Other Animals?

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

Life Is A Flame That Is Always Burning Itself Out; But It Catches Fire Again Every Time A Child Is Born. Life Is Greater Than Death, And Hope Than Despair.

Self-sacrifice Enables Us To Sacrifice Other People Without Blushing.

If You Lived In London, Where The Whole System Is One Of False Good-fellowship, And You May Know A Man For Twenty Years Without Finding Out That He Hates You Like Poison, You Would Soon Have Your Eyes Opened. There We Do Unkind Things In A Kind Way: We Say Bitter Things In A Sweet Voice: We Always Give Our Friends Chloroform When We Tear Them To Pieces.

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.

The Fact That We Can Become Accustomed To Anything, However Disgusting At First, Makes It Necessary To Examine Carefully Everything We Have Become Accustomed To.

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

A Fool-proof Method For Sculpting An Elephant: First, Get A Huge Block Of Marble; Then You Chip Away Everything That Doesn't Look Like An Elephant.

I Have My Own Soul. My Own Spark Of Divine Fire.

Though All Society Is Founded On Intolerance, All Improvement Is Founded On Tolerance.

Democracy Substitutes Election By The Incompetent Many For Appointment By The Corrupt Few.

Democracies Have

Leisure May Be Defined As Free Activity, Labor As Compulsory Activity. Leisure Does What It Likes, Labor Does What It Must, The Compulsion Being That Of Nature, Which In These Latitudes Leaves Men No Choice Between Labor And Starvation.

To Make Democracy Work, You Need An Aristocratic Democracy. To Make Aristocracy Work, You Need A Democratic Aristocracy.

We Are The Living Graves Of Murdered Beasts, Slaughtered To Satisfy Our Appetites. How Can We Hope In This World To Attain The Peace We Say We Are So Anxious For?

Vegetarian Diet

Men Are Always Thinking That They Are Going To Do Something Grandly Wicked To Their Enemies; But When It Comes To The Point, Really Bad Men Are Just As Rare As Really Good Ones.

As Long As More People Will Pay Admission To A Theater To See A Naked Body Than To See A Naked Brain, The Drama Will Languish.

If All The Economists Were Laid End To End, They'd Never Reach A Conclusion.

It Is More Dangerous To Be A Great Prophet Or Poet Than To Promote Twenty Companies For Swindling Simple Folk Out Of Their Savings.

What Is Virtue But The Trade Unionism Of The Married?

In A Stupid Nation The Man Of Genius Becomes A God : Everybody Worships Him And Nobody Does His Will.

I Choose Not To Make A Graveyard Of My Body For The Rotting Corpses Of Dead Animals.

I Knew If I Waited Around Long Enough Something Like This Would Happen.

The Great Advantage Of A Hotel Is That It Is A Refuge From Home Life.

Sherlock Holmes Was A Drug Addict Without A Single Amiable Trait.

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.

Capitalism Drives The Employers To Do Their Worst To The Employed, And The Employed To Do The Least For Them. And It Boasts All The Time Of The Incentive It Provides To Both To Do Their Best! . . . The Reason The Capitalist System Has Worked So Far Without Jamming For More Than A Few Months At A Time, And Then Only In Places, Is That It Has Not Yet Succeeded In Making A Conquest Of Human Nature So Complete That Everybody Acts On Strictly Business Principles.

Taking All The Round Of Professions And Occupations, You Will Find That Every Man Is The Worse For Being Poor; And The Doctor Is A Specially Dangerous Man When Poor.

I No Longer Desire Happiness: Life Is Nobler Than That.

Home Life Is No More Natural To Us Than A Cage Is Natural To A Cockatoo.

Revelations: A Curious Record Of The Visions Of A Drug Addict.

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.

Assassination Is The Extreme Form Of Censorship.

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.

Unless Comedy Touches Me As Well As Amuses Me, It Leaves Me With A Sense Of Having Wasted My Evening. I Go To The Theatre To Be Moved To Laughter, Not To Be Tickled Or Bustled Into It.

Hegel Was Right When He Said That We Learn From History That Men Never Learn Anything From History.

I Like A Bit Of Mongrel Myself, Whether It's A Man Or A Dog.

Custom Will Reconcile People To Any Atrocity, And Fashion Will Drive Them To Acquire Any Custom.

Reading Made Don Quixote A Gentleman, But Believing What He Read Made Him Mad.

Decency Cannot Be Discussed Without Indecency!

This Is The True Joy In Life: Being Used For A Purpose Recognized By Yourself As A Mighty One, Being A Force Of Nature Instead Of A Feverish, Selfish Little Clod Of Ailments And Grievances, Complaining That The World Will Not Devote Itself To Making You Happy. I Am Of The Opinion That My Life Belongs To The Whole Community And As Long As I Live, It Is My Privilege To Do For It What I Can. It Is A Sort Of Splendid Torch Which I Have Got Hold Of For The Moment And I Want To Make It Burn As Brightly As Possible Before Handing It On To Future Generations.

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

Those Who Are Looking For Paradise On Earth Should Come And See Dubrovnik.

Paradise On Earth

Better Never Than Late.

Those Who Understand The Steam Engine And The Electric Telegraph Spend Their Lives In Trying To Replace Them With Something Better.

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.

The Churches Must Learn Humility As Well As Teach It.

I Was Always Unlawful; I Broke The Law When I Was Born Because My Parents Weren't Married.

An Interesting Play Cannot In The Nature Of Things Mean Anything But A Play In Which Problems Of Conduct And Character Of Personalimportance To The Audience Are Raised And Suggestively Discussed.

Hatred Is The Coward's Revenge For Being Intimidated.

A Tranquil Woman Can Go On Sewing Longer Than An Angry Man Can Go On Fuming.

The Seven Deadly Sins... Food, Clothing, Firing, Rent, Taxes, Respectability And Children. Nothing Can Lift Those Seven Millstones From Man's Neck But Money; And The Spirit Cannot Soar Until The Millstones Are Lifted.

All Censorships Exist To Prevent Anyone From Challenging Current Conceptions And Existing Institutions.

If You Eliminate Smoking And Gambling, You Will Be Amazed To Find That Almost All An Englishman's Pleasures Can Be, And Mostly Are, Shared By His Dog.

A Socialist Is Somebody Who Doesn't Have Anything, And Is Ready To Divide It Up Equally Among Everybody.

A Drama Critic Is A Man Who Leaves No Turn Unstoned.

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

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.

Perhaps The Greatest Social Service That Can Be Rendered By Anybody To The Country And To Mankind Is To Bring Up A Family. But Here Again, Because There Is Nothing To Sell, There Is A Very General Disposition To Regard A Married Woman's Work As No Work At All, And To Take It As A Matter Of Course That She Should Not Be Paid For It.

Do Not Mistake Your Objection To Defeat For An Objection To Fighting, Your Objection To Being A Slave For An Objection To Slavery, Your Objection To Not Being As Rich As Your Neighbor For An Objection To Poverty. The Cowardly, The Insubordinate, And The Envious Share Your Objections.

Money Is The Most Important Thing In The World. It Represents Health, Strength, Honor, Generosity, And Beauty As Conspicuously As The Want Of It Represents Illness, Weakness, Disgrace, Meanness, And Ugliness.

Everybody Who Does Not Live In A Prostitute's Bed And On A Diet Of Cocaine Snow Is Called An Ascetic Nowadays.

Life Is Too Short For Men To Take It Seriously.

Security, The Chief Pretense Of Civilization, Cannot Exist Where The Worst Of Dangers, The Danger Of Poverty, Hangs Over Everyone's Head.

Social Progress Takes Effect Through The Replacement Of All Institutions By New Ones; And Since Every Institution Involves The Recognition Of The Duty Of Conforming To It, Progress Must Involve The Repudiation Of An Established Duty At Every Step.

If A Man Is Indolent, Let Him Be Poor. If He Is Drunken, Let Him Be Poor.... Also--somewhat Inconsistently--blessed Are The Poor!

When The World Goes Mad, One Must Accept Madness As Sanity; Since Sanity Is, In The Last Analysis, Nothing But The Madness On Which The Whole World Happens To Agree.

As Long As You Don't Fly Openly In The Face Of Society, Society Doesn't Ask Any Inconvenient Questions; And It Makes Precious Short Work Of The Cads Who Do. There Are No Secrets Better Kept Than The Secrets Everybody Guesses.

Democracy Is A Device That Insures We Shall Be Governed No Better Than We Deserve.

At Present, Intelligent People Do Not Have Their Children Vaccinated, Nor Does The Law Now Compel Them To. The Result Is Not, As The Jennerians Prophesied, The Extermination Of The Human Race By Smallpox; On The Contrary More People Are Now Killed By Vaccination Than By Smallpox.

Man Is The Only Animal Of Which I Am Thoroughly And Cravenly Afraid...there Is No Harm In A Well-fed Lion. It Has No Ideals, No Sect, No Party.

Love Is A Gross Exaggeration Of The Difference Between One Person And Everybody Else.

The Writer Who Aims At Producing The Platitudes Which Are "not For An Age, But For All Time" Has His Reward In Being Unreadable Inall Ages.... The Man Who Writes About Himself And His Own Time Is The Only Sort Of Man Who Writes About All People And About All Time.

It Is Difficult, If Not Impossible, For Most People To Think Otherwise Than In The Fashion Of Their Own Period.

Few Of Us Have Vitality Enough To Make Any Of Our Instincts Imperious.

We Have No More Right To Consume Happiness Without Producing It Than To Consume Wealth Without Producing It.

To A Professional Critic (i Have Been One Myself) Theatre-going Is The Curse Of Adam. The Play Is The Evil He Is Paid To Endure In The Sweat Of His Brow; And The Sooner It Is Over, The Better.

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

I Become More Convinced That Beings From Other Planets Are Using The Earth As A Lunatic Asylum

Lunatic Asylums

I Want To Be All Used Up When I Die.

I Love Little Children Too But I Don't Cut Off Their Heads And Stick Them In Vases.

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