Quotes to inspire and reflect

We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one.

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

Happiness . . . is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.

If one were to build the house of happiness, the largest space would be the waiting room.

If you want to understand the meaning of happiness, you must see it as a reward and not as a goal.

That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

It is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.

Old habits are strong and jealous.

One nail drives out another; habit is overcome by habit.

Habit is a compromise effected between an individual and his environment.

Habit, n . A shackle for the free.

It grows—it must grow; nothing can prevent it.

Growth is the only evidence of life.

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.

O, well it has been said, that there is no grief like the grief which does not speak!

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert it only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested , and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.

I measure every Grief I meet With narrow, probing, eyes— I wonder if It weighs like Mine— Or has an Easier size.

I will offer here, as a sound maxim, this: That we can’t reach old age by another man’s road.

In old age our bodies are worn-out instruments, on which the soul tries in vain to play the melodies of youth. But because the instrument has lost its strings, or is out of tune, it does not follow that the musician has lost his skill.

And what would it be to grow old? For, after a certain distance, every step we take in life we find the ice growing thinner below our feet, and all around us and behind us we see our contemporaries going through.

Old age was growing inside me. It kept catching my eye from the depths of the mirror. I was paralyzed sometimes as I saw it make its way for me so steadily when nothing inside me was ready for it.

One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.

and, from all I can learn, the landlord does not intend to repair.

Ability is not something to be saved, like money, in the hope that you can draw interest on it. The interest comes from the spending. Unused ability, like unused muscles, will atrophy.

A special ability means a heavy expenditure of energy in a particular direction, with a consequent drain from some other side of life.

It is a great ability to be able to conceal one’s ability.

Ability and achievement are bona fides no one dares question, no matter how unconventional the man who presents them.

There are many rare abilities in the world which Fortune never brings to light.

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study.

End of Project Gutenberg's Maxims for Revolutionists, by George Bernard Shaw

If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself.

[Transcriber's note: He spelled it 'Shakespear'. He spelled Caesar with an ae ligature.]

Two starving men cannot be twice as hungry as one; but two rascals can be ten times as vicious as one.

Make your cross your crutch; but when you see another man do it, beware of him.

If you injure your neighbor, better not do it by halves.

Sentimentality is the error of supposing that quarter can be given or taken in moral conflicts.

Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

When a heretic wishes to avoid martyrdom he speaks of "Orthodoxy, True and False" and demonstrates that the True is his heresy.

Political Economy and Social Economy are amusing intellectual games; but Vital Economy is the Philosopher Stone.

The Chinese tame fowls by clipping their wings, and women by deforming their feet. A petticoat round the ankles serves equally well.

Those who understand evil pardon it: those who resent it destroy it.

Acquired notions of propriety are stronger than natural instincts. It is easier to recruit for monasteries and convents than to induce an Arab woman to uncover her mouth in public, or a British officer to walk through Bond Street in a golfing cap on an afternoon in May.

Compassion is the fellow-feeling of the unsound.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience!

Do not mistake your objection to defeat for an objection to fighting, your objection to being a slave for an objection to slavery, your objection to not being as rich as your neighbor for an objection to poverty. The cowardly, the insubordinate, and the envious share your objections.

If the wicked flourish and the fittest survive, Nature must be the God of rascals.