Pygmalion: A Hilarious and Poignant Exploration of Class and Identity from Bernard Shaw

by George Bernard Shaw

What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do.

I suppose the woman wants to live her own life; and the man wants to live his; and each tries to drag the other on to the wrong track. One wants to go north and the other south; and the result is that both have to go east, though they both hate the east wind.

You see, it's like this. If a man has a bit of a conscience, it always takes him when he's sober; and then it makes him low-spirited. A drop of booze just takes that off and makes him happy.

But you have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to take a human being and change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech for her. It's filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul.

I have to live for others and not for myself: that's middle class morality.

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:

Making life means making trouble. There's only one way of escaping trouble; and that's killing things.

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