Bernard Quotes
People get tired of everything, and of nothing sooner than of what they most like.
It is ridiculous to say that art has nothing to do with morality. What is true is that the artist's business is not that of the policeman.
If the governments devalue the currency in order to betray all creditors, you politely call this procedure 'inflation'.
Let no one suppose that the words doctor and patient can disguise from the parties the fact that they are employer and employee.
Some persons, by hating vice too much, come to love men too little. Hatred is self-punishment. Hatred is the cowards revenge for being intimidated.
When a man teaches something he does not know to somebody else who has no aptitude for it, and gives him a certificate of proficiency, the latter has completed the education of a gentleman.
Nowadays a parlor maid as ignorant as Queen Victoria was when she came to the throne would be classed as mentally defective.
Plato long ago pointed out the importance of being governed by men with sufficient sense of responsibility and comprehension of public duties to be very reluctant to undertake the work of governing.
If the wicked flourish and the fittest survive, Nature must be the god of rascals.
When the military man approaches, the world locks up its spoons and packs off its womankind.
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.
All religions begin with a revolt against morality, and perish when morality conquers them.
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.
Those who admire modern civilization usually identify it with the steam engine and the electric telegraph.
The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.
Civilization is a disease produced by the practice of building societies with rotten material.
Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn't really hurt.
Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.
All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.
You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.
You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.
Orchestras only need to be sworn at, and a German is consequently at an advantage with them, as English profanity, except in America, has not gone beyond a limited technology of perdition.
When domestic servants are treated as human beings it is not worth while to keep them.
The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.
The whole strength of England lies in the fact that the enormous majority of the English people are snobs.
I have not wasted my life trifling with literary fools in taverns, as Johnson did, when he should have been shaking England with the thunder of his spirit
Fashions are the only induced epidemics, proving that epidemics can be induced by tradesmen.
As an old soldier, I admit the cowardice: it's as universal as seasickness, and matters just as little.
We mustn't be stiff and stand-off, you know. We must be thoroughly democratic, and patronize everybody without distinction of class.
There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle.
When I was a boy, I naively thought that this thing called happiness would be something I would wake up to find every day once I could smoke, drink and fornicate.
The only reason I would have liked to have gone to university is because I like cricket. Not a very good reason to want to go, but as good as any, I suppose.
I don't remember ever being full of dislike and hatred for people, like some kids I've come across now.
But you've got to have money for comfort, which obviously doesn't matter as much when you're young, but even so. I always like to bloody eat well and be warm. Have a drink when I want it.
Although I have to admit I have despised a couple of people simply because they have never had a job in their lives.
