萧伯纳(George Bernard Shaw,1856年7月26日-1950年11月2日),直译为乔治·伯纳·萧,爱尔兰剧作家,1925年"因为作品具有理想主义和人道主义"而获诺贝尔文学奖,是英国现代杰出的现实主义戏剧作家,是世界著名的擅长幽默与讽刺的语言大师。他的戏剧性语言尖锐泼辣,充满机智,妙语警名脱口而出。他的最著名的剧作有:《鳏夫的房产》、《华伦夫人的职业》、《武器与人》、《真相毕露》等。其喜剧作品《卖花女》(Pygmalion)因被 Alan Lerner 改编为音乐剧《窈窕淑女》(My Fair Lady),该音乐剧又被好莱坞改编为同名卖座电影而家喻户晓。
1. A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.
2. A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
3. A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
4. A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth.
5. Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.
6. An American has no sense of privacy. He does not know what it means.There is no such thing in the country.
7. Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.
8. Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
9. England and America are two countries separated by a common language.
10. Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
11. Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.
12. Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich--something for nothing.
13. Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.
14. Hell is full of musical amateurs.
15. I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.
16. I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
17. If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.
18. If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
19. If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a footrule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved.
20. If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
21. Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.
22. Lack of money is the root of all evil.
23. Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
24. Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.
25. Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
26. Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.
27. Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.
28. The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
29. The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed but that he cannot believe anyone else.