Saint Joan: A Chronicle Play in Six Scenes and an Epilogue

“Don't think you can frighten me by telling me that I am alone. France is alone. God is alone. And the loneliness of God is His strength.””

— Bernard Shaw

“The truth sticks in our throats with all the sauces it is served with: it will never go down until we take it without any sauce at all.””

— Bernard Shaw

“I could do without my warhorse; I could drag about in a skirt; I could let the banners and the trumpets and the knights and soldiers pass me and leave me behind as they leave the other women, if only I could still hear the wind in the trees, the larks in the sunshine, the young lambs crying through the healthy frost, and the blessed blessed church bells that send my angel voices floating to me on the wind. But without these things I cannot live; and by your wanting to take them away from me, or from any human creature, I know that your counsel is of the devil, and that mine is of God.””

— Bernard Shaw

“We must face the fact that society is founded on intolerance. [. . .] We may prate of toleration as we will; but society must always draw a line somewhere between allowable conduct and insanity or crime, in spite of the risk of mistaking sages for lunatics and saviours for blasphemers. We must persecute, even to the death; and all we can do to mitigate the danger of persecution is, first, to be very careful what we persecute, and second, to bear in mind that unless there is a large liberty to shock conventional people, and a well informed sense of the value of originality, individuality, and eccentricity, the result will be apparent stagnation covering a repression of evolutionary forces which will eventually explode with extravagant and probably destructive violence.””

— Bernard Shaw

“O God that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive Thy saints? How long, O Lord, how long?””

— Bernard Shaw

“We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!””

— Bernard Shaw

“If if's and and's were pots and pans, there'd be no need for tinkers.””

— Bernard Shaw

“I say, if you hate cruelty, remember that nothing is so cruel in its consequences as the toleration of heresy!””

— Bernard Shaw

“Well, what do they all amount to, these kings and captains and bishops and lawyers and such like? They just leave you in the ditch to bleed to death; and the next thing is, you meet them down there, for all the airs they give themselves.””

— Bernard Shaw