Only in books has mankind known perfect truth, love and beauty.

Our ideals, like the gods of old, are constantly demanding human sacrifices.

If I bind the future I bind my will. If I bind my will I strangle creation.

A soldier is an anachronism of which we must get rid.

The politician who once had to learn to flatter Kings has now to learn how to fascinate, amuse, coax, humbug, frighten, or otherwise strike the fancy of the electorate.

Unless comedy touches me as well as amuses me, it leaves me with a sense of having wasted my evening. I go to the theatre to be moved to laughter, not to be tickled or bustled into it.

I lay my eternal curse on whomsoever shall now or at any time hereafter make schoolbooks of my works and make me hated as Shakespeare is hated. My plays were not designed as instruments of torture. All the schools that lust after them get this answer, and will never get any other.