Major Barbara quotes

Now to deplore this preference as sordid, and teach children that it is sinful to desire money, is to strain towards the extreme possible limit of impudence in lying, and corruption in hypocrisy.

The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization, the one sound spot in our social conscience.

Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty as conspicuously and undeniably as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness and ugliness.

The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization, the one sound spot in our social conscience.

Money is the most important thing in the world.

It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty as conspicuously and undeniably as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness and ugliness. Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys base people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people.

He can do nothing for us: he says, naturally enough, that it is absurd that he should be asked to provide for the children of a man who is rolling in money.

You see, Stephen, your father must be fabulously wealthy, because there is always a war going on somewhere.

You need not remind me of that, mother. I have hardly ever opened a newspaper in my life without seeing our name in it. The Undershaft torpedo! The Undershaft quick firers! The Undershaft ten inch! the Undershaft disappearing rampart gun! the Undershaft submarine!

It’s not pleasant for me, either, especially if you are still so childish that you must make it worse by a display of embarrassment.

It is only in the middle classes, Stephen, that people get into a state of dumb helpless horror when they find that there are wicked people in the world.

In our class, we have to decide what is to be done with wicked people; and nothing should disturb our self possession. Now ask your question properly.

Well, dear, there were other differences.

I really cannot bear an immoral man.

I am not a Pharisee, I hope; and I should not have minded his merely doing wrong things: we are none of us perfect. But your father didn’t exactly do wrong things: he said them and thought them: that was what was so dreadful.

Apologetically. I am somewhat older. With a touch of courtship.

Time has stood still with you.

Promptly. Rubbish! This is your family.

Let me advise you to study Greek, Mr. Undershaft. Greek scholars are privileged men. Few of them know Greek; and none of them know anything else; but their position is unchallengeable. Other languages are the qualifications of waiters and commercial travellers:

Greek is to a man of position what the hallmark is to silver.

Dolly: don’t be insincere. Cholly: fetch your concertina and play something for us.

Let me advise you to study Greek, Mr. Undershaft.

Greek scholars are privileged men. Few of them know Greek; and none of them know anything else; but their position is unchallengeable.

Other languages are the qualifications of waiters and commercial travellers: Greek is to a man of position what the hallmark is to silver.

Oh yes she has.

There are no orphans in the Salvation Army.

Your father there has a great many children and plenty of experience, eh?

Oh yes she has. There are no orphans in the Salvation Army.

Your father there has a great many children and plenty of experience, eh?

Looking at him with quick interest and nodding. Just so. How did you come to understand that? Lomax is heard at the door trying the concertina.

Shocked. But not your sort of blood and fire, you know.

My sort of blood cleanses: my sort of fire purifies.

So do ours. Come down tomorrow to my shelter—the West Ham shelter—and see what we’re doing. We’re going to march to a great meeting in the Assembly Hall at Mile End. Come and see the shelter and then march with us:

Not at all.

The more destructive war becomes the more fascinating we find it.

No, Mr. Lomax, I am obliged to you for making the usual excuse for my trade; but I am not ashamed of it. I am not one of those men who keep their morals and their business in watertight compartments.

I do not find it an unpleasant subject, my dear.

It is the only one that capable people really care for.

Looking at her watch. Well, if you are determined to have it, I insist on having it in a proper and respectable way. Charles: ring for prayers. General amazement. Stephen rises in dismay.

Sorry, I’m sure. By the way, papa, what is your religion—in case I have to introduce you again?

My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.

Then I’m afraid you and Mr. Shirley won’t be able to comfort one another after all. You’re not a Millionaire, are you, Peter?

Gravely.

Poverty, my friend, is not a thing to be proud of.

Angrily. Who made your millions for you? Me and my like. What’s kep’ us poor? Keepin’ you rich. I wouldn’t have your conscience, not for all your income.

Angrily. Who made your millions for you? Me and my like. What’s kep’ us poor? Keepin’ you rich. I wouldn’t have your conscience, not for all your income.

I wouldn’t have your income, not for all your conscience, Mr. Shirley.

He goes to the penthouse and sits down on a form.

and now I’ll get me own face bashed and come back and show it to ’er. E’ll it me ’ardern I ’it ’er. That’ll make us square. To Adolphus. Is that fair or is it not? You’re a genlmn: you oughter know.

Two black eyes won’t make one white one, Bill.

I didn’t ast you. Cawn’t you never keep your mahth shut? I ast the genlmn.

You know, I do not admit that I am imposing on Barbara. I am quite genuinely interested in the views of the Salvation Army. The fact is,

I am a sort of collector of religions; and the curious thing is that I find I can believe them all.

By the way, have you any religion?

The two things are—

No. Money and gunpowder.

Surprised, but interested. That is the general opinion of our governing classes. The novelty is in hearing any man confess it.

Excuse me: is there any place in your religion for honor, justice, truth, love, mercy and so forth?

Yes: they are the graces and luxuries of a rich, strong, and safe life.

Suppose one is forced to choose between them and money or gunpowder?

Suppose one is forced to choose between them and money or gunpowder?

Choose money and gunpowder; for without enough of both you cannot afford the others.

Yes.

This love of the common people may please an earl’s granddaughter and a university professor; but I have been a common man and a poor man; and it has no romance for me.

Leave it to the poor to pretend that poverty is a blessing: leave it to the coward to make a religion of his cowardice by preaching humility: we know better than that.

We three must stand together above the common people: how else can we help their children to climb up beside us? Barbara must belong to us, not to the Salvation Army.

Well, I can only say that if you think you will get her away from the Salvation Army by talking to her as you have been talking to me, you don’t know Barbara.

My friend: I never ask for what I can buy.

In a white fury. Do I understand you to imply that you can buy Barbara?

You shall see.

All religious organizations exist by selling themselves to the rich.

Not the Army. That is the Church of the poor.

Is twopence not enough? I can afford a little more, if you press me.

Two million millions would not be enough. There is bad blood on your hands; and nothing but good blood can cleanse them.

Money is no use. Take it away. She turns to Cusins. Dolly: you must write another letter for me to the papers. He makes a wry face. Yes: I know you don’t like it; but it must be done.

In profound irony.

Genuine unselfishness is capable of anything, my dear.

Unsuspectingly, as she turns away to take the money from the drum and put it in a cash bag she carries. Yes, isn’t it? Undershaft looks sardonically at Cusins.

That’s Andrew all over.

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

He convinced me that I have all my life been doing improper things for proper reasons.

That’s Andrew all over. He never does a proper thing without giving an improper reason for it.

He convinced me that I have all my life been doing improper things for proper reasons.

Adolphus: now that Barbara has left the Salvation Army, you had better leave it too. I will not have you playing that drum in the streets.

Out of countenance. Well, drivel is drivel, don’t you know, whatever a man’s age.

In good society in England, Charles, men drivel at all ages by repeating silly formulas with an air of wisdom.

Schoolboys make their own formulas out of slang, like you. When they reach your age, and get political private secretaryships and things of that sort, they drop slang and get their formulas out of The Spectator or The Times.

only a simple knowledge of the secret that has puzzled all the philosophers, baffled all the lawyers, muddled all the men of business, and ruined most of the artists: the secret of right and wrong.

Why, man, you’re a genius, master of masters, a god! At twenty-four, too!

Keeping his temper with difficulty. You are pleased to be facetious. I pretend to nothing more than any honorable English gentleman claims as his birthright he sits down angrily.

but it never occurs to her to doubt that she can teach morals and religion. You are all alike, you respectable people.

You can’t tell me the bursting strain of a ten-inch gun, which is a very simple matter; but you all think you can tell me the bursting strain of a man under temptation.

You daren’t handle high explosives; but you’re all ready to handle honesty and truth and justice and the whole duty of man, and kill one another at that game. What a country! what a world!

With a touch of brutality.

The government of your country! I am the government of your country: I, and Lazarus.

Do you suppose that you and half a dozen amateurs like you, sitting in a row in that foolish gabble shop, can govern Undershaft and Lazarus? No, my friend: you will do what pays us.

You may be a devil; but God speaks through you sometimes. She takes her father’s hands and kisses them. You have given me back my happiness: I feel it deep down now, though my spirit is troubled.

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.

Well, take me to the factory of death, and let me learn something more. There must be some truth or other behind all this frightful irony. Come, Dolly. She goes out.

Stephen smiles patronizingly; buttons his coat responsibly; and crosses the room to the door. Lady Britomart, dressed for out-of-doors, opens it before he reaches it. She looks round for the others; looks at Stephen; and turns to go without a word.

Don’t be apologetic, Stephen. And don’t forget that you have outgrown your mother.

She goes out.

It is true. You accused me yourself, Lady Brit, of joining the Army to worship Barbara; and so I did.

She bought my soul like a flower at a street corner; but she bought it for herself.

What! Not for Dionysos or another?

None of my own, certainly.

I have more power than you, more will. You do not drive this place: it drives you.

And what drives the place?

Not necessarily. Remember the Armorer’s Faith. I will take an order from a good man as cheerfully as from a bad one. If you good people prefer preaching and shirking to buying my weapons and fighting the rascals, don’t blame me.

I can make cannons: I cannot make courage and conviction.

Bah! You tire me, Euripides, with your morality mongering. Ask Barbara: she understands. He suddenly takes Barbara’s hands, and looks powerfully into her eyes. Tell him, my love, what power really means.

they justify themselves. I see no darkness here, no dreadfulness. In your Salvation shelter I saw poverty, misery, cold and hunger. You gave them bread and treacle and dreams of heaven. I give from thirty shillings a week to twelve thousand a year.

They find their own dreams; but I look after the drainage.

I save their souls just as I saved yours.

Yes, the deadly seven. Counting on his fingers. Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children.

Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man’s neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted.

I lifted them from your spirit. I enabled Barbara to become Major Barbara; and I saved her from the crime of poverty.

Do you call poverty a crime?

The worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues beside it: all the other dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison.

Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing: a murder here and a theft there, a blow now and a curse then:

They poison us morally and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss.

Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty.

Pah! Turning on Barbara. you talk of your half-saved ruffian in West Ham: you accuse me of dragging his soul back to perdition. Well, bring him to me here; and I will drag his soul back again to salvation for you.

Not at all. I had the strongest scruples about poverty and starvation. Your moralists are quite unscrupulous about both: they make virtues of them.

I had rather be a thief than a pauper. I had rather be a murderer than a slave.

I don’t want to be either; but if you force the alternative on me, then, by Heaven, I’ll choose the braver and more moral one. I hate poverty and slavery worse than any other crimes whatsoever. And let me tell you this.

I don’t want to be either; but if you force the alternative on me, then, by Heaven, I’ll choose the braver and more moral one. I hate poverty and slavery worse than any other crimes whatsoever. And let me tell you this.

Poverty and slavery have stood up for centuries to your sermons and leading articles: they will not stand up to my machine guns.

Don’t preach at them: don’t reason with them. Kill them.

But huddle them together in a certain house in Westminster; and let them go through certain ceremonies and call themselves certain names until at last they get the courage to kill; and your six hundred and seventy fools become a government.

Your pious mob fills up ballot papers and imagines it is governing its masters; but the ballot paper that really governs is the paper that has a bullet wrapped up in it.

That is perhaps why, like most intelligent people, I never vote.

and your six hundred and seventy fools become a government. Your pious mob fills up ballot papers and imagines it is governing its masters; but the ballot paper that really governs is the paper that has a bullet wrapped up in it.

That is perhaps why, like most intelligent people, I never vote.

Vote! Bah! 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. Is that historically true, Mr. Learned Man, or is it not?

Vote! Bah!

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.

Is that historically true, Mr. Learned Man, or is it not?

It is historically true. I loathe having to admit it. I repudiate your sentiments. I abhor your nature. I defy you in every possible way. Still, it is true. But it ought not to be true.

Ought, ought, ought, ought, ought! Are you going to spend your life saying ought, like the rest of our moralists? Turn your oughts into shalls, man.

Come and make explosives with me. Whatever can blow men up can blow society up. The history of the world is the history of those who had courage enough to embrace this truth. Have you the courage to embrace it, Barbara?

Ought, ought, ought, ought, ought! Are you going to spend your life saying ought, like the rest of our moralists? Turn your oughts into shalls, man. Come and make explosives with me.

Whatever can blow men up can blow society up.

The history of the world is the history of those who had courage enough to embrace this truth. Have you the courage to embrace it, Barbara?

Barbara, I positively forbid you to listen to your father’s abominable wickedness. And you, Adolphus, ought to know better than to go about saying that wrong things are true.

What does it matter whether they are true if they are wrong?

What does it matter whether they are wrong if they are true?

Barbara, I positively forbid you to listen to your father’s abominable wickedness. And you, Adolphus, ought to know better than to go about saying that wrong things are true. What does it matter whether they are true if they are wrong?

What does it matter whether they are wrong if they are true?

Rising. Children: come home instantly. Andrew: I am exceedingly sorry I allowed you to call on us. You are wickeder than ever. Come at once.

Shaking her head. It’s no use running away from wicked people, mamma.

It is every use. It shows your disapprobation of them.

It does not save them.

I can see that you are going to disobey me. Sarah: are you coming home or are you not?

I daresay it’s very wicked of papa to make cannons; but I don’t think I shall cut him on that account.

Pouring oil on the troubled waters. The fact is, you know, there is a certain amount of tosh about this notion of wickedness. It doesn’t work. You must look at facts. Not that I would say a word in favor of anything wrong;

Violently. Don’t dare call me Biddy.

Charles Lomax: you are a fool. Adolphus Cusins: you are a Jesuit. Stephen: you are a prig. Barbara: you are a lunatic. Andrew: you are a vulgar tradesman.

Now you all know my opinion; and my conscience is clear, at all events She sits down again with a vehemence that almost wrecks the chair.

Stephen: you are a prig. Barbara: you are a lunatic. Andrew: you are a vulgar tradesman. Now you all know my opinion; and my conscience is clear, at all events She sits down again with a vehemence that almost wrecks the chair.

My dear, you are the incarnation of morality.

She snorts. Your conscience is clear and your duty done when you have called everybody names. Come, Euripides! it is getting late; and we all want to get home. Make up your mind.

My dear, you are the incarnation of morality. She snorts.

Your conscience is clear and your duty done when you have called everybody names.

Come, Euripides! it is getting late; and we all want to get home. Make up your mind.

I do not: all the poet in me recoils from being a good man. But there are things in me that I must reckon with: pity—

Pity! The scavenger of misery.

I know. You love the needy and the outcast: you love the oppressed races, the negro, the Indian ryot, the Pole, the Irishman. Do you love the Japanese? Do you love the Germans? Do you love the English?

No.

Every true Englishman detests the English. We are the wickedest nation on earth; and our success is a moral horror.

That is what comes of your gospel of love, is it?

You are fencing, Euripides. You are weakening: your grip is slipping. Come! try your last weapon. Pity and love have broken in your hand: forgiveness is still left.

No: forgiveness is a beggar’s refuge. I am with you there: we must pay our debts.

Well said. Come! you will suit me. Remember the words of Plato.

But you are driving me against my nature. I hate war.

Hatred is the coward’s revenge for being intimidated.

Dare you make war on war? Here are the means: my friend Mr. Lomax is sitting on them.

Firmly. Not on any account.

I will see the whole establishment blown up with its own dynamite before I will get up at five. My hours are healthy, rational hours: eleven to five.

Come when you please: before a week you will come at six and stay until I turn you out for the sake of your health. Calling. Bilton! He turns to Lady Britomart, who rises. My dear: