Themes

"There's small choice in rotten apples."

"Preferment goes by letter and affection."

"I will not choose what many men desire, Because I will not jump with common spirits, And rank me with the barbarous multitudes."

"Which of them shall I take? Both? one? or neither? Neither can be enjoy'd, If both remain alive."

"Set honour in one eye and death i' the other, And I will look on both indifferently."

"We must now take precautions to prevent you from being embarrassed by something in which the ignorant majority is at fault for lack of proper consideration, and so from supposing with them, that man has not been created truly good simply because he is able to do evil. ... If you reconsider this matter carefully and force your mind to apply a more acute understanding to it, it will be revealed to you that man's status is better and higher for the very reason for which it is thought to be inferior: it is on this choice between two ways, on this freedom to choose either alternative, that the glory of the rational mind is based, it is in this that the whole honor of our nature consists, it is from this that its dignity is derived."

"When presented with options it's interesting to see what choices the people make."

"Who would not, finding way, break loose from hell, * * * * * * And boldly venture to whatever place Farthest from pain?"

"Rather than be less Car'd not to be at all."

"So much to win, so much to lose, No marvel that I fear to choose."

"Every person, if he so wills, can become a paradigmatic human being, not by brushing of his accidental qualities, but by remaining in them and ennobling them. He ennobles them by choosing them."

"Imagine a captain of a ship the moment a shift of direction must be made; then he may be able to say: I can do either this or that. But if he is not a mediocre captain he will also be aware that during all this the ship is ploughing ahead with its ordinary velocity, and thus there is but a single moment when it is inconsequential whether he does this or does that. So also with a person-if he forgets to take into account the velocity-there eventually comes a moment where it is no longer a matter of an Either/Or, not because he has chosen, but because he has refrained from it, which also can be expressed by saying: Because others have chosen for him-or because he has lost himself."

"He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty."

"Be they wynners or loosers,…beggers should be no choosers."

"Betwixt the devil and the deep sea."

"The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice."

"Better to sink beneath the shock Than moulder piecemeal on the rock!"

"He that will not when he may, When he will he shall have nay."

"Chaos, that reigns here In double night of darkness and of shades."

"My hoarse-sounding horn Invites thee to the chase, the sport of kings."

"With a hey, ho, chevy! Hark forward, hark forward, tantivy! Hark, hark, tantivy! This day a stag must die."

"It (hunting) was the labour of the savages of North America, but the amusement of the gentlemen of England."

"D'ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay? D'ye ken John Peel at the break of the day? D'ye ken John Peel when he's far, far away, With his hounds and his horn in the morning?"

"Of horn and morn, and hark and bark, And echo's answering sounds, All poets' wit hath ever writ In dog-rel verse of hounds."

"Love's torments made me seek the chase; Rifle in hand, I roam'd apace. Down from the tree, with hollow scoff, The raven cried: "Head-off! head off!""

"Soon as Aurora drives away the night, And edges eastern clouds with rosy light, The healthy huntsman, with the cheerful horn, Summons the dogs, and greets the dappled morn."

"The woods were made for the hunter of dreams, The brooks for the fishers of song; To the hunters who hunt for the gunless game The streams and the woods belong. There are thoughts that moan from the soul of pine And thoughts in a flower bell curled; And the thoughts that are blown with scent of the fern Are as new and as old as the world."

"The dusky night rides down the sky And ushers in the morn: The hounds all join in glorious cry, The huntsman winds his horn; And a-hunting we will go."

"They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care; They pursued it with forks and hope; They threatened its life with a railway-share; They charmed it with smiles and soap."

"Proud Nimrod first the bloody chase began, A mighty hunter, and his prey was man."

"Together let us beat this ample field, Try what the open, what the covert yield."

"He thought at heart like courtly Chesterfield, Who, after a long chase o'er hills, dales, bushes, And what not, though he rode beyond all price, Ask'd next day, "if men ever hunted twice?""

"The motto ‘Ordo ab Chao’ is an extremely important expression within Freemasonry and is known by Masons as the motto of the 33rd degree. The motto can be found on the splendid decorations of the Order of Sovereign Grand Inspectors General, which is one of the highest distinctions that can be awarded to a Mason."

"If we were children of chaos, the fundamental laws of nature could not exist."

"When Shaw is read in the light of the existentialist thinkers, a new philosophical position arises from his works as a whole, a position of he himself was probably unconscious. It is this: that although the ultimate reality may be irrational, yet man's relation to it is not. Existentialism means the recognition that life is a tiny corner of casual order in a universe of chaos. All men are aware of that chaos; but some insulate themselves from it and refuse to face it. These are the Insiders, and they make up the overwhelming majority of the human race. The Outsider is the man who has faced chaos. If he is an abstract philosopher — like Hegel — he will try to demonstrate that chaos is not really chaos, but that underlying it is an order of which we are unaware. If he is an existentialist, he acknowledges that chaos is chaos, a denial of life — or rather, of the conditions under which life are possible. If there is nothing but life and chaos, then life is permanently helpless — as Sartre and Camus think it is. But if a rational relation can somehow exist between them, ultimate pessimism is avoided, as it must be avoided if the Outsider is to live at all. It is this contribution which makes Shaw the key figure of existentialist thought."

"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos."

"Nay, had I power, I should Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell, Uproar the universal peace, confound All unity on earth."

"...there is a perpetual struggle between manifested chaos and the unmanifested. It is the struggle of the Forces of Light with the dark forces. Christ Himself actively resisted evil... he drove the merchants from the Temple, and all his severe accusations against the scribes and Pharisees... If we try to read objectively the words... attributed to Christ, we shall see a Teaching which is severe in its mercy. Therefore, the words "resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek turn to him the other also... If this law of Karma, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," is inevitable and exact justice, it by no means follows that we ourselves, personally, should attempt to fulfil it in this way. If we do so, we shall never emerge from the magic circle of karma. Indeed, we must forgive our personal enemies, as who knows but that the blow one receives is a return blow, well-deserved under the law of Karma? By returning such a blow with another and with a feeling of revenge in our heart, we do not outlive this karma, but we continue and even intensify it in the worst way for ourselves. Moreover, by forgiving our enemies we decrease the amount of evil in space and become immune against many blows. Similarly, let us understand the words "Love thine enemies." However, with all this, we must resist evil, if we do not want to be entirely overwhelmed by it. (26 May 1934)"

"Lo: thy dread empire, Chaos, is restored; Light dies before thy uncreating word: Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall; And universal darkness buries all."

"Then rose the seed of Chaos, and of Night, To blot out order and extinguish light."

"The Joker: Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair!"

"Fate shall yield To fickle Chance, and Chaos judge the strife."

":(e) All those means towards the end which arise at the instigation of something else, as, e.g., fat-reducing, purging, drugs and instruments are causes of health; for they all have the end as their object, although they differ from each other as being some instruments, others actions [i.e., necessary conditions]."

":(d) The same as "end"; i.e. the final cause; e.g., as the "end" of walking is health. For why does a man walk? "To be healthy," we say, and by saying this we consider that we have supplied the cause [the final cause]."

":(c) The source of the first beginning of change or rest; e.g. the man who plans is a cause, and the father is the cause of the child, and in general that which produces is the cause of that which is produced, and that which changes of that which is changed [i.e., the efficient cause]."

":(b) in another sense, the form or pattern; that is, the essential formula and the classes which contain it—e.g. the ratio 2:1 and number in general is the cause of the octave—and the parts of the formula [i.e., the formal cause]."

":(a) in one sense, that as the result of whose presence something comes into being—e.g., the bronze of a statue and the silver of a cup, and the classes which contain these [i.e., the material cause];"

"Cause means"

"Like watermen who look astern while they row the boat ahead."

"Gracefully, gracefully glides our bark On the bosom of Father Thames, And before her bows the wavelets dark Break into a thousand gems."