L. M. Shaw Quotes

What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?

All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.

Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.

Crime is only the retail department of what, in wholesale, we call penal law.

Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn't really hurt.

The early Christian rules of life were not made to last, because the early Christians did not believe that the world itself was going to last.

The most intolerable pain is produced by prolonging the keenest pleasure.

Let not the right side of your brain know what the left side doeth.

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.

Civilization is a disease produced by the practice of building societies with rotten material.

The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

Once you've done one style, you leave it for a while.

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.

Rich men without convictions are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity.

In a stupid nation the man of genius becomes a god : everybody worships him and nobody does his will.

Power is the faculty or capacity to act, the strength and potency to accomplish something.

All problems are finally scientific problems.

I'm only a beer teetotaller, not a champagne teetotaller.

Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.

You cannot be a hero without being a coward.

When I hear that there are 5,000,000 working women in this country, I always take occasion to say that there are 18,000,000 but only 5,000,000 receive their wages.

I can't understand guys who just have to have your autograph. What do you do when you get home, take it out & look at it?

I never expect a soldier to think.

It's the little things that count, hundreds of them.

I no longer desire happiness: life is nobler than that.

He has turned defensive boxing into a poetic art. Trouble is, nobody ever knocked anybody out with a poem.

When an apparent miracle happened.it proved divine mission to the credulous, and proved a contract with the devil to the skeptical.

The Americans are very clear, and obsessed with nouns.

Think what cowards men would be if they had to bear children. Women are altogether a superior species.

I would exchange every painting of Christ for one snapshot.

I would love to write the story of my upbringing in Ireland.

I certainly had no intention of playing a man.

Any belief worth having must survive doubt

I find it incredibly tedious, hate that it murders itself with its own conservative pomposity.

Acting doesn't have to be threadbare misery all the time.

I take the theater seriously in that I loathe it, I'm bored by it.

The test of good education is seeing how it behaves in a fight.

I really don't think I could consent to go to Heaven if I thought there were no animals there.

Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot! A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot. Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again! The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

It is feeling that sets a man thinking, and not thought that sets him feeling.

I am a brigand: I live by robbing the rich.' 'I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor.

The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it.

A man who desires to get married should know everything or nothing.

If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people's opinions will rush in from all quarters.

Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it.

Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis.

I think America becomes more disgruntled by going to the movies and having an endlessly good time at them.

A thing that nobody believes cannot be proved too often.

I tell you that as long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.