“Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.”

— George Bernard Shaw, The Devil's Disciple (1901), Act II

About George Bernard Shaw

1856 – 1950

Irish playwright and critic, Nobel laureate in Literature (1925).

“If you teach a man anything he will never learn it.”

“Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.”

“You use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul.”

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

“It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?”

“In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.”

“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces.”

“That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.”

“Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason.”