Pygmalion

by George Bernard Shaw

What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesnt come everyday.

do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we ever do it?

“I’m willing to tell you: I’m wanting to tell you: I’m waiting to tell you.”

What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything.

Ten pounds is a lot of money: it makes a man feel prudent like; and then goodbye to happiness.

You see, we’re all savages, more or less. We’re supposed to be civilized and cultured—to know all about poetry and philosophy and art and science, and so on; but how many of us know even the meanings of these names?

Theres always something professional about doing a thing superlatively well.

Done to me! Ruined me. Destroyed my happiness. Tied me up and delivered me into the hands of middle class morality.

Who asked him to make a gentleman of me? I was happy. I was free.

I have to live for others and not for myself: thats middle class morality.

the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how shes treated.

The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.

I can do without anybody. I have my own soul: my own spark of divine fire. But (with sudden humility) I shall miss you,

Oh, you are a devil. You can twist the heart in a girl as easy as some could twist her arms to hurt her.

Sneering doesnt become either the human face or the human soul. I am expressing my righteous contempt for Commercialism. I dont and wont trade in affection.

I think a woman fetching a man’s slippers is a disgusting sight: did I ever fetch your slippers? I think a good deal more of you for throwing them in my face.

No use slaving for me and then saying you want to be cared for: who cares for a slave?

Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making trouble. Theres only one way of escaping trouble; and thats killing things. Cowards, you notice, are always shrieking to have troublesome people killed.

Oh, you are a cruel tyrant. I cant talk to you: you turn everything against me: I’m always in the wrong. But you know very well all the time that youre nothing but a bully.

I wont be coaxed round as if I was a baby or a puppy. If I cant have kindness, I’ll have independence.

Independence? Thats middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

If you can preach, I can teach. I’ll go and be a teacher.

uncultivated people who have been brought up in tasteless homes by commonplace or disagreeable parents, and to whom, consequently, literature, painting, sculpture, music, and affectionate personal relations come as modes of sex if they come at all.

No doubt there are slavish women as well as slavish men; and women, like men, admire those that are stronger than themselves.

The weak may not be admired and hero-worshipped ; but they are by no means disliked or shunned; and they never seem to have the least difficulty in marrying people who are too good for them.

life is not one long emergency: it is mostly a string of situations for which no exceptional strength is needed, and with which even rather weak people can cope if they have a stronger partner to help them out.

Weak people want to marry strong people

They want too much for too little; and when the bargain is unreasonable beyond all bearing, the union becomes impossible: it ends in the weaker party being either