WIST

It was from Handel that I learned that style consists in force of assertion. If you can say a thing with one stroke unanswerably, you have style; if not, you are at best a marchand de plasir, a decorative litterateur, or a musical confectioner, or a painter of fans with cupids and cocottes. Handel has this power. When he sets the words “Fixed in his everlasting seat,” the atheist is struck dumb; God is there, fixed in his everlasting seat by Handel, even if you live in an Avenue Paul Bert and despise such superstitions. You may despise what you like, but you cannot contradict Handel.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
“Causerie on Handel in England,” Ainslee’s Magazine (May 1913)
Originally a music society lecture given in France. Longer discussion.

Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity; and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
“Killing for Sport,” Nash’s Magazine (Sep 1914)

All very serious revolutionary propositions begin as huge jokes. Otherwise they would be stamped out by the lynching of their first exponents.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
“Where is the New Element in the Norwegian School?”, The Quintessence of Ibsenimsm (1891)

Crude classifications and false generalizations are the curse of organized life.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
(Attributed)

If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you’ll find you’ve done it.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
(Attributed)
Unsourced. Also attributed to Pam Shaw.

An election is a moral horror, as bad as battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
(Attributed)

A man learns to skate by staggering about making a fool of himself; indeed, he progresses in all things by making a fool of himself.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
(Attributed)

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
(Attributed)

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
(Attributed)
Sometimes cited with the Americanized "insures." Also given as "Democracy is a system ensuring that the people are governed no better than they deserve." Frequently quoted, but never sourced.

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.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
(Attributed)

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
(Attributed)

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
(Attributed)

A nation’s morals are like its teeth; when they’re rotten it hurts to touch them.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
(Attributed)

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
(Attributed)

Poverty does not produce unhappiness: It produces degradation.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
(Attributed)

The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure is occupation.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
(Attributed)

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
(Attributed)

When I was young, I observed that nine out of every ten things I did were failures, so I did ten times more work.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
(Attributed)

The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
(Attributed)
Unverified in Shaw's writings.

LORD NORTHCLIFFE: The trouble with you, Shaw, is that you look as if there were famine in the land.

SHAW: The trouble with you, Northcliffe, is that you look as if you were the cause of it.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
(Attributed)

Exchange with Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe. Likely apocryphal.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
(Attributed)

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
(Attributed)

The problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
(Attributed)

[A pessimist] is a man who thinks everybody as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
An Unsocial Socialist, ch. 5 (1887)

The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
Androcles and the Lion, Preface

We are members one of another; so that you cannot injure or help your neighbor without injuring or helping yourself.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
Androcles and the Lion, Preface (“The Alternative to Barabbas”) (1912)

Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
Androcles and the Lion, Preface, “Credibility of the Gospels” (1912)

The open mind never acts: when we have done our utmost to arrive at a reasonable conclusion, we still … must close our minds for the moment with a snap, and act dogmatically on our conclusions.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
Androcles nd the Lion, Preface, “Christianity and the Empire” (1912)

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
Annajanska (1919)

I see plenty of good in the world working itself out as fast as the idealists will allow it.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
Arms and the Man, Preface (1894)