All Quotes

"I have never admitted the right of an elderly author to alter the work of a young author, even when the young author happens to be his former self. In the case of a work which is a mere exhibition of skill in conventional art, there may be some excuse for the delusion that the longer the artist works on it the nearer he will bring it to perfection. Yet even the victims of this delusion must see that there is an age limit to the process, and that though a man of forty-five may improve the workmanship of a man of thirty-five, it does not follow that a man of fifty-five can do the same. When we come to creative art, to the living word of a man delivering a message to his own time, it is clear that any attempt to alter this later on is simply fraud and forgery. As I read the old Quintessence of Ibsenism I may find things that I see now at a different angle, or correlate with so many things then unnoted by me that they take on a different aspect. But though this may be a reason for writing another book, it is not a reason for altering an existing one."

"Just as the liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe any one else; so a guilty society can more easily be persuaded that any apparently innocent act is guilty than that any apparently guilty act is innocent."

"The salvation of the world depends on the men who will not take evil good-humouredly, and whose laughter destroys the fool instead of encouraging him."

"It's well to be off with the Old Woman before you're on with the New."

"The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me."

"People are always blaming circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them."

"There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses."

"I know Miss Warren is a great devotee of the Gospel of Getting On."

"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."

"Oh, you are a very poor soldier — a chocolate cream soldier!"

"I never apologize."

"You're not a man, you're a machine."

"Hail, Sphinx: salutation from Julius Caesar! I have wandered in many lands, seeking the lost regions from which my birth into this world exiled me, and the company of creatures such as I myself. I have found flocks and pastures, men and cities, but no other Caesar, no air native to me, no man kindred to me, none who can do my day's deed, and think my night's thought."

"My way hither was the way of destiny; for I am he of whose genius you are the symbol: part brute, part woman, and part God — nothing of man in me at all. Have I read your riddle, Sphinx?"

"Theodotus: Caesar: you are a stranger here, and not conversant with our laws. The kings and queens of Egypt may not marry except with their own royal blood. Ptolemy and Cleopatra are born king and consort just as they are born brother and sister. Britannus (shocked): Caesar: this is not proper. Theodotus (outraged): How! Caesar (recovering his self-possession): Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature."

"When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty."

"Again, there is the illusion of "increased command over Nature," meaning that cotton is cheap and that ten miles of country road on a bicycle have replaced four on foot. But even if man's increased command over Nature included any increased command over himself (the only sort of command relevant to his evolution into a higher being), the fact remains that it is only by running away from the increased command over Nature to country places where Nature is still in primitive command over Man that he can recover from the effects of the smoke, the stench, the foul air, the overcrowding, the racket, the ugliness, the dirt which the cheap cotton costs us."

"The novelties of one generation are only the resuscitated fashions of the generation before last."

"I delight in the war more & more. It has waked up the country out of its filthy wallowing in money (blood is a far superior bath); and it has put a fourpence on the Income Tax which will never come off it if the Fabian can help it; so that Old Age Pensions will be within reach at the end of the ten years repayment period, if not sooner. ... Charrington calls me a Tory because I declare for Imperialism as our social theory."

"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity."

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

": What will History say? : History, sir, will tell lies, as usual."

"I was a cannibal for twenty-five years. For the rest I have been a vegetarian. It was Shelley who first opened my eyes to the savagery of my diet."

"This is the real enemy, the invader from the East, the Druze, the ruffian, the oriental parasite; in a word: the Jew."

"This craving for bouquets by Jews is a symptom of racial degeneration. The Jews are worse than my own people. Those Jews who still want to be the chosen race (chosen by the late Lord Balfour) can go to Palestine and stew in their own juice. The rest had better stop being Jews and start being human beings."

"The way to deal with worldly people is to frighten them by repeating their scandalous whisperings aloud."

"The public want actresses, because they think all actresses bad. They don't want music or poetry because they know that both are good. So actors and actresses thrive and poets and composers starve."

"There are some men who are considered quite ugly, but who are more remarkable than pretty people. You often see that in artists."

"All very fine, Mary; but my old-fashioned common sense is better than your clever modern nonsense."

"If you leave your art, the world will beat you back to it. The world has not an ambition worth sharing, or a prize worth handling. Corrupt successes, disgraceful failures, or sheeplike vegetation are all it has to offer. I prefer Art, which gives me a sixth sense of beauty, with self-respect: perhaps also an immortal reputation in return for honest endeavour in a labour of love."

"Perhaps woman's art is of woman's life a thing apart, 'tis man's whole existence; just as love is said to be the reverse — though it isn't."

"I hate singers, a miserable crew who think that music exists only in their own throats."

"A man's own self is the last person to believe in him, and is harder to cheat than the rest of the world."

"Composers are not human; They can live on diminished sevenths, and be contented with a pianoforte for a wife, and a string quartet for a family."

"Geniuses are horrid, intolerant, easily offended, sleeplessly self-conscious men, who expect their wives to be angels with no further business in life than to pet and worship their husbands. Even at the best they are not comfortable men to live with; and a perfect husband is one who is perfectly comfortable to live with."

"Even the youngest of us may be wrong sometimes."

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."

"There is no love sincerer than the love of food."

"The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them."

"The confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error."

"Economy is the art of making the most of life. The love of economy is the root of all virtue."

"Do not do unto others as you would expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same."

"If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a foot-rule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved."

"Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."

"He who confuses political liberty with freedom and political equality with similarity has never thought for five minutes about either."

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."

"The duke inquires contemptuously whether his gamekeeper is the equal of the Astronomer Royal; but he insists that they shall both be hanged equally if they murder him."

"Where equality is undisputed, so also is subordination."

"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry."

"The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the parent's first duty."