George Bernard Shaw - Pygmalion (1913)

35 Sourced Quotes

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The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

George Bernard Shaw
I have to live for others and not for myself; that's middle-class morality.

George Bernard Shaw
That is the injustice of a woman's lot. A woman has to bring up her children; and that means to restrain them, to deny them things they want, to set them tasks, to punish them when they do wrong, to do all the unpleasant things. And then the father, who has nothing to do but pet them and spoil them, comes in when all her work is done and steals their affection from her.

George Bernard Shaw
Liza: My aunt died of influenza: so they said … But it's my belief (as how) they done the old woman in.

George Bernard Shaw
You see, lots of the real people can't do it at all: they're such fools that they think style comes by nature to people in their position; and so they never learn. There's always something professional about doing a thing superlatively well.

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 doesn't come every day.

George Bernard Shaw
I ask you, what am I? I'm one of the undeserving poor: thats what I am. Think of what that means to a man.

George Bernard Shaw
I ain't such a mug as to put up my children to all I know myself.

George Bernard Shaw
The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plains.

George Bernard Shaw
Time enough to think of the future when you haven't any future to think of.

George Bernard Shaw
Popular Christianity has for its emblem a gibbet, for its chief sensation a sanginary execution after torture, for its central mystery is an insane vengeance bought off by a trumpery expiation. But there is a nobler and profounder Christianity which affirms the sacred mystery of equality and forbids the glaring futility and folly of vengeance.

George Bernard Shaw
Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes; our power wielded by cowards and weaklings; and our honour false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons

George Bernard Shaw
I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance. I find that the moment I let myself make friends with a woman, I become selfish and tyrannical.

George Bernard Shaw
Have you ever met a man of good character where women are concerned?

George Bernard Shaw
If a man is indolent, let him be poor. If he is drunken, let him be poor.... Also--somewhat inconsistently--blessed are the poor!

George Bernard Shaw
Live in contact with dreams and you will get something of their charm: live in contact with facts and you will get something of their brutality. I wish I could find a country to live in where the facts were not brutal and the dreams not real.

George Bernard Shaw
There are two things necessary to Salvation.... Money and gunpowder.

George Bernard Shaw
When a lion meets another with a louder roar, the first lion thinks the last a bore.

George Bernard Shaw
It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth, without making some other Englishman hate or despise him; English is not accessible even to Englishmen.

George Bernard Shaw
No use slaving for me and then saying you want to be cared for: who cares for a slave? If you come back, come back for the sake of good fellowship; for you'll get nothing else.

George Bernard Shaw
I can't turn your soul on. Leave me those feelings; and you can take away the voice and the face. They are not you.

George Bernard Shaw
Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making trouble. There's only one way of escaping trouble; and that's killing things.

George Bernard Shaw
I don't want to talk grammar, I want to talk like a lady.

George Bernard Shaw
At present there is not a single credible established religion in the world.

George Bernard Shaw
Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another.

George Bernard Shaw
I wouldn't have ate it, only I'm too lady-like to take it out of my mouth.

George Bernard Shaw
Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible; and don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon.

George Bernard Shaw
The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization. Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty.... Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys basic people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people.

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

George Bernard Shaw
He never does a proper thing without giving an improper reason for it.

George Bernard Shaw