"Do you think that the things people..." - Quote by George Bernard Shaw
Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are more true: they are the only things that are true.
More by George Bernard Shaw
“When you want to put something into your part that is not in the play, you must ask the author-or some other author-to lead up to the interpolation for you. Never forget that the effect of a line may depend not on its delivery, but on something said earlier in the play, either by somebody else or by yourself, and that if you change it, it may be necessary to change the whole first act as well.”
“We veneer civilization by doing unkind things in a kind way.”
“The business man - the man to whom age brings golf instead of wisdom.”
More on Truth
“A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.”
“The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.”
“Indeed, what forces us at all to suppose that there is an essential opposition of 'true' and 'false'? Is it not sufficient to assume degrees of apparentness and, as it were, lighter and darker shadows and shades of appearance- different 'values', to use the language of painters?”
More on Reality
“Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.”
“I envy you going to Oxford: it is the most flower-like time of one's life. One sees the shadow of things in silver mirrors. Later on, one sees the Gorgon's head, and one suffers, because it does not turn one to stone.”
“There are two things which Man cannot look at directly without flinching: the sun and death.”