‘John Bull’s Other Island’ (1907) act 4
The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty...our first duty—a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed—is not to be poor.
‘Major Barbara’ (1907) preface
Nobody can say a word against Greek: it stamps a man at once as an educated gentleman.
‘Major Barbara’ (1907) act 1
I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.
‘Major Barbara’ (1907) act 2
I can’t talk religion to a man with bodily hunger in his eyes.
‘Major Barbara’ (1907) act 2
Wot prawce Selvytion nah?
‘Major Barbara’ (1907) act 2
Alcohol is a very necessary article...It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.
‘Major Barbara’ (1907) act 2
He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
‘Major Barbara’ (1907) act 3
Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.
‘Major Barbara’ (1907) act 3
Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the difference between one young woman and another.
‘Major Barbara’ (1907) act 3.
But a lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) act 1
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) act 1
Vitality in a woman is a blind fury of creation.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) act 1
Of all human struggles there is none so treacherous and remorseless as the struggle between the artist man and the mother woman.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) act 1
You think that you are Ann’s suitor; that you are the pursuer and she the pursued...Fool: it is you who are the pursued, the marked down quarry, the destined prey.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) act 2
Mendoza: I am a brigand: I live by robbing the rich. Tanner: I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) act 3
Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) act 3
Englishmen never will be slaves: they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allow them to do.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) act 3
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) act 3
In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence and famine.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) act 3
In the arts of peace Man is a bungler.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) act 3
As an old soldier I admit the cowardice: it’s as universal as sea sickness, and matters just as little.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) act 3
When the military man approaches, the world locks up its spoons and packs off its womankind.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) act 3
What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) act 3
Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners were left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You can’t have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) act 3
Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) act 4
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘The Revolutionist’s Handbook’, foreword
The art of government is the organization of idolatry.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘Maxims: Idolatry’
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘Maxims: Democracy’
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘Maxims: Liberty and Equality’
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘Maxims: Education’
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘Maxims: Marriage’
Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced by the inferior.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘Maxims: Titles’
When domestic servants are treated as human beings it is not worth while to keep them.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘Maxims: Servants’
If you strike a child take care that you strike it in anger, even at the risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neither can nor should be forgiven.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘Maxims: How to Beat Children’
Beware of the man whose god is in the skies.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘Maxims: Religion’
Self-denial is not a virtue: it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘Maxims: Virtues and Vice’
A moderately honest man with a moderately faithful wife, moderate drinkers both, in a moderately healthy house: that is the true middle class unit.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘Maxims: Moderation’
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘Maxims: Reason’
The man who listens to Reason is lost: Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘Maxims: Reason’
Decency is Indecency’s conspiracy of silence.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘Maxims: Decency’
Life levels all men: death reveals the eminent.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘Maxims: Fame’
Home is the girl’s prison and the woman’s workhouse.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘Maxims: Women in the Home’
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘Maxims: Stray Sayings’
Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘Maxims: Stray Sayings’
Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘Maxims: Stray Sayings’
Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘Maxims: Stray Sayings’
Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.
‘Man and Superman’ (1903) ‘Maxims: Self-Sacrifice’
There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on
patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles; he supports his king on loyal principles and cuts off his king’s head on republican principles.
‘The Man of Destiny’ (1898) p. 201
Anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you.
‘Misalliance’ (1914) p. 85
The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her.
‘Mrs Warren’s Profession’ (1898) act 2
A great devotee of the Gospel of Getting On.
‘Mrs Warren’s Profession’ (1898) act 4
You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
‘O’Flaherty V.C.’ (1919) p. 178
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.
‘Parents and Children’ (1914) ‘Children’s Happiness’
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
‘Parents and Children’ (1914) ‘Children’s Happiness’
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
‘Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant’ (1898) vol. 2, preface
The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like. It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.
‘Pygmalion’ (1916) preface
I don’t want to talk grammar, I want to talk like a lady.
‘Pygmalion’ (1916) act 2
Pickering: Have you no morals, man? Doolittle: Can’t afford them, Governor.
‘Pygmalion’ (1916) act 2
I’m one of the undeserving poor...up agen middle class morality all the time...What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything.
‘Pygmalion’ (1916) act 2
Gin was mother’s milk to her.
‘Pygmalion’ (1916) act 3
Walk! Not bloody likely. I am going in a taxi.
‘Pygmalion’ (1916) act 3
If ever I utter an oath again may my soul be blasted to eternal damnation!
‘Saint Joan’ (1924) sc. 2
We were not fairly beaten, my lord. No Englishman is ever fairly beaten.
‘Saint Joan’ (1924) sc. 4
How can what an Englishman believes be heresy? It is a contradiction in terms.
‘Saint Joan’ (1924) sc. 4
Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?
‘Saint Joan’ (1924) epilogue
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
‘The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet’ (1911) ‘Limits to Toleration’
‘Do you know what a pessimist is?’ ‘A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.’
‘An Unsocial Socialist’ (1887) ch. 5
The great advantage of a hotel is that it’s a refuge from home life.
‘You Never Can Tell’ (1898) act 2
The younger generation is knocking at the door, and as I open it there steps spritely in the incomparable Max.
‘Saturday Review’ 21 May 1898 ‘Valedictory’, on handing over the theatre review column to Max Beerbohm
Americans are conceited enough to believe they are the only fools in the world.
In Michael Holroyd ‘Bernard Shaw: The Lure of Fantasy’ (1991)
The trouble, Mr Goldwyn, is that you are only interested in art and I am only interested in money.
Telegraphed version of the outcome of a conversation between Shaw and Sam Goldwyn, in Alva Johnson ‘The Great Goldwyn’ (1937) ch. 3
[Dancing is] a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.
In ‘New Statesman’ 23 March 1962
England and America are two countries separated by a common language.
Attributed
7.70 Sir Hartley Shawcross (Baron Shawcross) 1902—
‘But,’ said Alice, ‘the question is whether you can make a word mean different things.’ ‘Not so,’ said Humpty-Dumpty, ‘the question is which is to be the master. That’s all.’ We are the masters at the moment, and not only at the moment, but for a very long time to come.
‘Hansard’ 2 April 1946, col. 1213; often quoted: ‘We are the masters now’.
7.71 Charles Shaw-Lefevre, Viscount Eversley 1794-1888
What is that fat gentleman in such a passion about?
As a child, on hearing Charles James Fox speak in Parliament: G. W. E. Russell ‘Collections and Recollections’ (1898) ch. 11
7.72 Patrick Shaw-Stewart 1888-1917
I saw a man this morning Who did not wish to die; I ask and cannot answer
If otherwise wish I.
Poem (1916) in M. Baring ‘Have You Anything to Declare?’ (1936) p. 39
7.73John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham
See Buckingham (2.234) in Volume I
7.74Mary Shelley (nèe Wollstonecraft) 1797-1851
You seek for knowledge and wisdom as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.
‘Frankenstein’ (1818) Letter 4
It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn.
‘Frankenstein’ (1818) ch. 4
I beheld the wretch—the miserable monster whom I had created.
‘Frankenstein’ (1818) ch. 5
All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us.
‘Frankenstein’ (1818) ch. 10
Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded.
‘Frankenstein’ (1818) ch. 10
Teach him to think for himself? Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people!
On her son’s education, in Matthew Arnold ‘Essays in Criticism’ Second Series (1888) ‘Shelley’
7.75 Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822
The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.
‘Adonais’ (1821) preface
I weep for Adonais—he is dead!
O, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
‘Adonais’ (1821) st. 1
He died,
Who was the Sire of an immortal strain, Blind, old and lonely.
‘Adonais’ (1821) st. 4
To that high Capital, where kingly Death Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, He came.
‘Adonais’ (1821) st. 7
The passion-wingéd Ministers of thought.
‘Adonais’ (1821) st. 9
Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!
She knew not ’twas her own; as with no stain
She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.
‘Adonais’ (1821) st. 10
Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone, But grief returns with the revolving year.
‘Adonais’ (1821) st. 18
From the great morning of the world when first God dawned on Chaos.
‘Adonais’ (1821) st. 19
Alas! that all we loved of him should be, But for our grief, as if it had not been, And grief itself be mortal!
‘Adonais’ (1821) st. 21
Whence are we, and why are we? Of what scene The actors or spectators?
‘Adonais’ (1821) st. 21
A pardlike Spirit, beautiful and swift— A Love in desolation masked;—a Power
Girt round with weakness;—it can scarce uplift The weight of the superincumbent hour;
It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,
A breaking billow;—even whilst we speak Is it not broken?
‘Adonais’ (1821) st. 32
He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead; Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now— Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal.
‘Adonais’ (1821) st. 38
He hath awakened from the dream of life— ’Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit’s knife Invulnerable nothings.
‘Adonais’ (1821) st. 39
He has out-soared the shadow of our night;
Envy and calumny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again;
From the contagion of the world’s slow stain He is secure, and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain.
‘Adonais’ (1821) st. 40
He lives, he wakes,—’tis Death is dead, not he.
‘Adonais’ (1821) st. 41
He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely.
‘Adonais’ (1821) st. 43
The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments.
‘Adonais’ (1821) st. 52
A widow bird sat mourning for her love Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above, The freezing stream below.
‘Charles the First’ (1822) sc. 5, l. 9
That orbéd maiden, with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the Moon.
‘The Cloud’ (1819)
I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die,
For after the rain when with never a stain The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.
‘The Cloud’ (1819)
Death and his brother Sleep!
One pale as yonder wan and hornéd moon, With lips of lurid blue,
The other glowing like the vital morn, When throned on ocean’s wave
It breathes over the world:
Yet both so passing strange and wonderful!
‘The Daemon of the World’ part 1, l. 1 (a revision of the opening lines of ‘Queen Mab’)
I never was attached to that great sect, Whose doctrine is that each one should select Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,
And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend To cold oblivion.
‘Epipsychidion’ (1821) l. 149
The beaten road
Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread, Who travel to their home among the dead
By the broad highway of the world, and so With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe, The dreariest and the longest journey go.
‘Epipsychidion’ (1821) l. 154
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!
‘Epipsychidion’ (1821) l. 591
Chameleons feed on light and air: Poets’ food is love and fame.
‘An Exhortation’
Good-night? ah! no; the hour is ill Which severs those it should unite; Let us remain together still,
Then it will be good night.
‘Good Night’
Let there be light! said Liberty, And like sunrise from the sea, Athens arose!
‘Hellas’ (1822) l. 682
The world’s great age begins anew, The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn;
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.
‘Hellas’ (1822) l. 1060
O cease! must hate and death return? Cease! must men kill and die? Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn Of bitter prophecy.
The world is weary of the past, Oh, might it die or rest at last!
‘Hellas’ (1822) l. 1096
I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed. Gods and men, we are all deluded thus! It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed.
‘Hymn of Pan’
The awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats though unseen among us,—visiting This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower.
‘Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’ (1816)
The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is past—there is a harmony In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
‘Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’ (1816)
I love all waste
And solitary places; where we taste The pleasure of believing what we see Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.
‘Julian and Maddalo’ (1818) l. 14
Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!
‘Julian and Maddalo’ (1818) l. 57
Me—who am as a nerve o’er which do creep The else unfelt oppressions of this earth.
‘Julian and Maddalo’ (1818) l. 449
Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong:
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.
‘Julian and Maddalo’ (1818) l. 544
London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore
