All Quotes

"I am not fighting a hopeless fight. People who have fought in real fights don't, as a rule."

"It is not only possible to say a great deal in praise of play; it is really possible to say the highest things in praise of it. It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground. To be at last in such secure innocence that one can juggle with the universe and the stars, to be so good that one can treat everything as a joke — that may be, perhaps, the real end and final holiday of human souls."

"For fear of the newspapers politicians are dull, and at last they are too dull even for the newspapers. The speeches in our time are more careful and elaborate, because they are meant to be read, and not to be heard. And exactly because they are more careful and elaborate, they are not so likely to be worthy of a careful and elaborate report. They are not interesting enough. So the moral cowardice of modern politicians has, after all, some punishment attached to it by the silent anger of heaven. Precisely because our political speeches are meant to be reported, they are not worth reporting. Precisely because they are carefully designed to be read, nobody reads them."

"It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. No one sees anything funny in a tree falling down. No one sees a delicate absurdity in a stone falling down. No man stops in the road and roars with laughter at the sight of the snow coming down. The fall of thunderbolts is treated with some gravity. The fall of roofs and high buildings is taken seriously. It is only when a man tumbles down that we laugh. Why do we laugh? Because it is a grave religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified."

"It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it."

"A man must be orthodox upon most things, or he will never even have time to preach his own heresy."

"Ireland is a country in which the political conflicts are at least genuine; they are about something. They are about patriotism, about religion, or about money: the three great realities. In other words, they are concerned with what commonwealth a man lives in, or with what universe a man lives in, or with how he is to manage to live in either."

"The Puritan is only strong enough to stiffen; the Catholic is strong enough to relax."

"We all know that constancy, jealousy, and the personal pledge are natural and inevitable in sex; we do not feel any surprise when we see them either in a murder or in a valentine."

"I must frankly say that Bernard Shaw always seems to me to use the word God not only without any idea of what it means, but without one moment's thought about what it could possibly mean. He said to some atheist, "Never believe in a God that you cannot improve on." The atheist (being a sound theologian) naturally replied that one should not believe in a God whom one could improve on; as that would show that he was not God."

"For there are two types of great humorist: those who love to see a man absurd and those who hate to see him absurd. Of the first kind are Rabelais and Dickens; of the second kind are Swift and Bernard Shaw."

"Shyness is always the sign of a divided soul; a man is shy because he somehow thinks his position at once despicable and important. If he were without humility he would not care; and if he were without pride he would not care."

"We have passed the age of the demagogue, the man who has little to say and says it loud. We have come to the age of the mystagogue or don, the man who has nothing to say, but says it softly and impressively in an indistinct whisper."

"The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder."

"For my friend said that he opened his intellect as the sun opens the fans of a palm tree, opening for opening's sake, opening infinitely for ever. But I said that I opened my intellect as I opened my mouth, in order to shut it again on something solid. I was doing it at the moment. And as I truly pointed out, it would look uncommonly silly if I went on opening my mouth infinitely, for ever and ever."

"Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before."

"Fairy tales...are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear."

"[A]rt is limitation. [...] The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame."

"The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land."

"Our chiefs said 'Done,' and I did not deem it; Our seers said 'Peace,' and it was not peace; Earth will grow worse till men redeem it, And wars more evil, ere all wars cease."

"For we that fight till the world is free, We are not easy in victory: We have known each other too long, my brother, And fought each other, the world and we."

"I swear to you, then," said MacIan, after a pause. "I swear to you that nothing shall come between us. I swear to you that nothing shall be in my heart or in my head till our swords clash together. I swear it by the God you have denied, by the Blessed Lady you have blasphemed; I swear it by the seven swords in her heart. I swear it by the Holy Island where my fathers are, by the honour of my mother, by the secret of my people, and by the chalice of the Blood of God." The atheist drew up his head. "And I," he said, "give my word."

"It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common. But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, "Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," or "Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complex picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority."

"Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."

"But whenever one meets modern thinkers (as one often does) progressing toward a madhouse, one always finds, on inquiry, that they have just had a splendid escape from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds of people become Socialists, not because they have tried Socialism and found it nice, but because they have tried Individualism and found it particularly nasty."

"If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."

"Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas ... for it is the assertion of a universal negative"

"As for science and religion, the known and admitted facts are few and plain enough. All that the parsons say is unproved. All that the doctors say is disproved. That's the only difference between science and religion there's ever been, or will be."

"The academic mind reflects infinity, and is full of light by the simple process of being shallow and standing still."

"Marriage is a duel to the death, which no man of honour should decline."

"It is a quaint comment on the notion that the English are practical and the French merely visionary, that we were rebels in arts while they were rebels in arms."

"The mind moves by instincts, associations and premonitions and not by fixed dates or completed processes. Action and reaction will occur simultaneously: or the cause actually be found after the effect. Errors will be resisted before they have been properly promulgated: notions will be first defined long after they are dead."

"A man making the confession of any creed worth ten minutes' intelligent talk, is always a man who gains something and gives up something. So long as he does both he can create: for he is making an outline and a shape."

"The central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child."

"Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought."

"He did not know the way things were going: he was too Victorian to understand the Victorian epoch. He did not know enough ignorant people to have heard the news."

"It is largely because the free-thinkers, as a school, have hardly made up their minds whether they want to be more optimist or more pessimist than Christianity that their small but sincere movement has failed."

"There is no great harm in the theorist who makes up a new theory to fit a new event. But the theorist who starts with a false theory and then sees everything as making it come true is the most dangerous enemy of human reason."

"The rich are the scum of the earth in every country."

"But since he stood for England And knew what England means, Unless you give him bacon You mustn’t give him beans."

"In the city set upon slime and loam, They cry in their Parliament, "Who goes home?" And there comes no answer in arch or dome, For none in the city of graves goes home. Yet these shall perish and understand, For God has pity on this great land."

"Men that are men again: Who goes home? Tocsin and trumpeter! Who goes home? For there's blood on the grass and blood on the foam, And blood on the body, when Man comes home. And a voice valedictory: Who is for victory? Who is for liberty? Who goes home?"

"It is all as of old, the empty clangour, The scrawled on a five-foot page, The huckster who, mocking holy anger, Painfully paints his face with rage. * * * We that fight till the world is free, We have no comfort in victory; We have read each other as Cain his brother, We know each other, these slaves and we."

"Are they clinging to their crosses?"

"Talk about the pews and steeples And the cash that goes therewith! But the souls of Christian peoples... Chuck it, Smith!"

"Heaven shall forgive you Bridge at dawn, The clothes you wear — or do not wear — And Ladies’ Leap-frog on the lawn And dyes and drugs, and petits verres."

"But for the Virtuous Things you do, The Righteous Work, the Public Care, It shall not be forgiven you."

"I’ll read "Jack Redskin on the Quest" And feed my brain with better things."

"They spoke of Progress spiring round, Of Light and Mrs. Humphry Ward — It is not true to say I frowned, Or ran about the room and roared; I might have simply sat and snored — I rose politely in the club And said, “I feel a little bored; Will someone take me to a pub?”"