When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.

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

I never resist temptation because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.

Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage -- it can be delightful.

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

A day's work is a day's work, neither more nor less, and the man who does it needs a day's sustenance, a night's repose, and due leisure, whether he be a painter or ploughman.

What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn't come every day.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

The longer I live, the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.

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 little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

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.

“When I was young I observed that nine out of every ten things I did were failures, so I did ten times more work”

“Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.”

“We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

“The harder I work the more I live.”

“The lack of money is the root of all evil.”

“You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul”

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

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

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

Find enough clever things to say, and you're a Prime Minister; write them down and you're a Shakespeare.

Give a man health and a course to steer, and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not.

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.

In heaven an angel is nobody in particular.

In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.

Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

Very few people can afford to be poor.

We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

"Go on writing plays, my boy, One of these days one of these London producers will go into his office and say to his secretary, "Is there a play from Shaw this morning?" and when she says, "No," he will say, "Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish." And that's your chance, my boy."