Quotes · verified word for word in the text
George Bernard Shaw quotes
14 quotes from 2 of George Bernard Shaw’s books on this site, book by book. Each quote is copied exactly from the book’s text in this site’s reader (the Project Gutenberg e-text named under each book) and links to its passage; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against that text. Quotes we could not find in a book we host are not listed.
Pygmalion
I sold flowers. I didn’t sell myself. Now you’ve made a lady of me I’m not fit to sell anything else.
— Liza · Act IV
If you can’t appreciate what you’ve got, you’d better get what you can appreciate.
— Higgins · Act V
Besides, do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we ever do it?
— Higgins · Act II
You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on), the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated.
— Liza · Act V
HIGGINS [becoming excited as the idea grows on him] 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.
— Higgins · Act II
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 Shakespear and Milton and The Bible; and don’t sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon.
— The Note Taker · Act I
I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.
— Liza · Act V
Every girl has a right to be loved.
— Liza · Act V
THE FLOWER GIRL [still preoccupied with her wounded feelings] He’s no right to take away my character. My character is the same to me as any lady’s.
— The Flower Girl · Act I
I have never sneered in my life. Sneering doesn’t become either the human face or the human soul.
— Higgins · Act V
Major Barbara
He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
— Undershaft · Act III
You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.
— Cusins · Act III
When you vote, you only change the names of the cabinet. When you shoot, you pull down governments, inaugurate new epochs, abolish old orders and set up new.
— Undershaft · Act III
He wrote up NOTHING IS EVER DONE IN THIS WORLD UNTIL MEN ARE PREPARED TO KILL ONE ANOTHER IF IT IS NOT DONE.
— Undershaft · Act III