FROM THE PAGES OF MAN AND SUPERMAN AND THREE OTHER PLAYS
“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.”
(Mrs. Warren’s Profession, page 62)
“What is any respectable girl brought up to do but to catch some rich man’s fancy and get the benefit of his money by marrying him?—as if a marriage ceremony could make any difference in the right or wrong of the thing!” (Mrs. Warren’s Profession, page 65)
“Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about?”
(Candida, page 144)
“God has given us a world that nothing but our own folly keeps from being a paradise.” (Candida, page 145)
“All the love in the world is longing to speak; only it dare not, because it is shy, shy, shy. That is the world’s tragedy.” (Candida, page 150)
“Man can climb to the highest summits; but he cannot dwell there long.” (Candida, page 176)
“I’m only a beer teetotaller, not a champagne teetotaller. I don’t like beer.” (Candida, page 182)
“The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.”
(The Devil’s Disciple, page 244)
My conscience is the genuine pulpit article: it annoys me to see people comfortable when they ought to be uncomfortable; and I insist on making them think in order to bring them to conviction of sin.
(Shaw’s Epistle Dedicatory to Man and Superman, page 302)
“We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins. Good Lord, my dear Ramsden, we are ashamed to walk, ashamed to ride in an omnibus, ashamed to hire a hansom instead of keeping a carriage, ashamed of keeping one horse instead of two and a groom-gardener instead of a coachman and footman. The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.”
(Man and Superman, page 345)
“I had become a new person; and those who knew the old person laughed at me. The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor: he took my measure anew every time he saw me, whilst all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.”
(Man and Superman, page 368)
“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, page 438)
“It is not death that matters, but the fear of death. It is not killing and dying that degrades us, but base living, and accepting the wages and profits of degradation. Better ten dead men than one live slave or his master.” (Man and Superman, page 442)
“Marriage is a mantrap baited with simulated accomplishments and delusive idealizations.” (Man and Superman, page 453)
“An epoch is but a swing of the pendulum; and each generation thinks the world is progressing because it is always moving.”
(Man and Superman, page 464)