A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.
— George Bernard Shaw
What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?
Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.
Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.
The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.
Most people do not pray; they only beg.
When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.
An index is a great leveller.
A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.
No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.
In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it's more dangerous to lose than to win.
I want to be all used up when I die.
Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.
Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.
Hell is full of musical amateurs.
The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.
Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.
The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.
Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.
Syllables govern the world.
People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.
Give a man health and a course to steer, and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not.
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.
The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.
Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.
We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
I'm an atheist and I thank God for it.
You cannot be a hero without being a coward.
The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.
If you injure your neighbour, better not do it by halves.
Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.
Better never than late.
The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.
You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.
Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability.
My reputation grows with every failure.
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.
A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.
Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.
An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.
Find enough clever things to say, and you're a Prime Minister; write them down and you're a Shakespeare.
Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.
Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.
