Pygmalion quotes

As will be seen later on, Pygmalion needs, not a preface, but a sequel, which I have supplied in its due place.

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. German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners:

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.

German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to Englishmen. The reformer England needs today is an energetic phonetic enthusiast: that is why I have made such a one the hero of a popular play.

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.

German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to Englishmen.

The reformer England needs today is an energetic phonetic enthusiast: that is why I have made such a one the hero of a popular play. There have been heroes of that kind crying in the wilderness for many years past.

It is so intensely and deliberately didactic, and its subject is esteemed so dry, that I delight in throwing it at the heads of the wiseacres who repeat the parrot cry that art should never be didactic.

It goes to prove my contention that art should never be anything else.

Finally, and for the encouragement of people troubled with accents that cut them off from all high employment, I may add that the change wrought by Professor Higgins in the flower girl is neither impossible nor uncommon.

Simply phonetics. The science of speech. That’s my profession; also my hobby.

Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby!

You can spot an Irishman or a Yorkshireman by his brogue. I can place any man within six miles. I can place him within two miles in London. Sometimes within two streets.

A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds has no right to be anywhere—no right to live.

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.

Quite overwhelmed, and looking up at him in mingled wonder and deprecation without daring to raise her head. Ah—ah—ah—ow—ow—oo!

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. I shall make a duchess of this draggletailed guttersnipe.

At her age! Nonsense!

Time enough to think of the future when you haven’t any future to think of.

No, Eliza: do as this lady does: think of other people’s futures; but never think of your own. Think of chocolates, and taxis, and gold, and diamonds.

How can she? She’s incapable of understanding anything.

Besides, do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we ever do it?

Very clever, Higgins; but not sound sense. To Liza. Miss Doolittle—

Moodily.

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

Dogmatically, lifting himself on his hands to the level of the piano, and sitting on it with a bounce. Well, I haven’t. I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance.

Dogmatically, lifting himself on his hands to the level of the piano, and sitting on it with a bounce. Well, I haven’t.

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. 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.

Only this morning, sir, you applied it to your boots, to the butter, and to the brown bread.

Oh, that! Mere alliteration, Mrs. Pearce, natural to a poet.

Well, sir, whatever you choose to call it, I beg you not to let the girl hear you repeat it.

Unabashed.

Can’t afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me.

Not that I mean any harm, you know. But if Liza is going to have a bit out of this, why not me too?

Don’t say that, Governor. Don’t look at it that way. What am I, Governors both? I ask you, what am I?

I’m one of the undeserving poor: that’s what I am.

Think of what that means to a man. It means that he’s up agen middle class morality all the time. If there’s anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it’s always the same story: “You’re undeserving; so you can’t have it.”

and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of amusement, cause I’m a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving.

What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything.

Therefore, I ask you, as two gentlemen, not to play that game on me. I’m playing straight with you. I ain’t pretending to be deserving. I’m undeserving; and I mean to go on being undeserving. I like it; and that’s the truth.

If you don’t you’ll be sorry for it after. If you do, she’ll be sorry for it after; but better you than her, because you’re a man, and she’s only a woman and don’t know how to be happy anyhow.

Pickering: if we listen to this man another minute, we shall have no convictions left.

To Doolittle. Five pounds I think you said.

Taking up her daughter’s cue. But why?

What they think they ought to think is bad enough, Lord knows; but what they really think would break up the whole show.

Do you suppose it would be really agreeable if I were to come out now with what I really think?

Seriously. Oh! I’m sure you don’t mean that, Mr. Higgins.

You see, we’re all savages, more or less.

We’re supposed to be civilized and cultured—to know all about poetry and philosophy and art and science, and so on; but how many of us know even the meanings of these names? To Miss Eynsford Hill. What do you know of poetry? To Mrs.

But it can’t have been right for your father to pour spirits down her throat like that. It might have killed her.

Not her. Gin was mother’s milk to her.

Besides, he’d poured so much down his own throat that he knew the good of it.

And always more agreeable when he had a drop in. When he was out of work, my mother used to give him fourpence and tell him to go out and not come back until he’d drunk himself cheerful and loving-like.

There’s lots of women has to make their husbands drunk to make them fit to live with.

Now quite at her ease. You see, it’s like this. If a man has a bit of a conscience, it always takes him when he’s sober; and then it makes him low-spirited. A drop of booze just takes that off and makes him happy.

There’s lots of women has to make their husbands drunk to make them fit to live with. Now quite at her ease. You see, it’s like this.

If a man has a bit of a conscience, it always takes him when he’s sober; and then it makes him low-spirited. A drop of booze just takes that off and makes him happy.

To Freddy, who is in convulsions of suppressed laughter. Here! what are you sniggering at?

Opening the door for her. Are you walking across the Park, Miss Doolittle? If so—

Walk! Not bloody likely.

Sensation. I am going in a taxi. She goes out.

As if I ever stop thinking about the girl and her confounded vowels and consonants. I’m worn out, thinking about her, and watching her lips and her teeth and her tongue, not to mention her soul, which is the quaintest of the lot.

You certainly are a pretty pair of babies, playing with your live doll.

Playing! The hardest job I ever tackled: make no mistake about that, mother. But you have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to take a human being and change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech for her.

Snatching up the slippers, and hurling them at him one after the other with all her force. There are your slippers. And there.

Take your slippers; and may you never have a day’s luck with them!

Astounded. What on earth—! He comes to her. What’s the matter? Get up. He pulls her up. Anything wrong?

Waking up. What do you mean?

I sold flowers. I didn’t sell myself.

Now you’ve made a lady of me I’m not fit to sell anything else. I wish you’d left me where you found me.

It doesn’t matter, dear. I only wanted to make you speak.

Because you can’t speak and whistle at the same time.

Higgins groans. Another very trying pause.

Oh don’t. You mustn’t think of it as an experiment. It shocks me, somehow.

Oh, I’m only a squashed cabbage leaf.

Continuing quietly.—but I owe so much to you that I should be very unhappy if you forgot me.

Stopping her work for a moment.

Your calling me Miss Doolittle that day when I first came to Wimpole Street. That was the beginning of self-respect for me.

She resumes her stitching. And there were a hundred little things you never noticed, because they came naturally to you. Things about standing up and taking off your hat and opening doors—

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.

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.

Please don’t grind your teeth, Henry.

and I tried to get back into the old way with her; but it was no use. You told me, you know, that when a child is brought to a foreign country, it picks up the language in a few weeks, and forgets its own.

Well, I am a child in your country. I have forgotten my own language, and can speak nothing but yours.

That’s the real break-off with the corner of Tottenham Court Road. Leaving Wimpole Street finishes it.

That’s not true. He treats a flower girl as if she was a duchess.

And I treat a duchess as if she was a flower girl.

I see. She turns away composedly, and sits on the ottoman, facing the window. The same to everybody.

Arrogant.

I can do without anybody. I have my own soul: my own spark of divine fire.

But with sudden humility I shall miss you, Eliza. He sits down near her on the ottoman. I have learnt something from your idiotic notions: I confess that humbly and gratefully. And I have grown accustomed to your voice and appearance. I like them, rather.

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.

Oh, you are a devil. You can twist the heart in a girl as easy as some could twist her arms to hurt her.

Mrs. Pearce warned me. Time and again she has wanted to leave you; and you always got round her at the last minute. And you don’t care a bit for her. And you don’t care a bit for me.

I have never sneered in my life.

Sneering doesn’t become either the human face or the human soul.

I am expressing my righteous contempt for Commercialism. I don’t and won’t trade in affection. You call me a brute because you couldn’t buy a claim on me by fetching my slippers and finding my spectacles. You were a fool:

You never thought of the trouble it would make for me.

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. Cowards, you notice, are always shrieking to have troublesome people killed.

Getting off the ottoman. You have no right to encourage him.

Every girl has a right to be loved.

What! By fools like that?

If you can’t stand the coldness of my sort of life, and the strain of it, go back to the gutter. Work ’til you are more a brute than a human being; and then cuddle and squabble and drink ’til you fall asleep.

Oh, it’s a fine life, the life of the gutter. It’s real: it’s warm: it’s violent: you can feel it through the thickest skin: you can taste it and smell it without any training or any work.

Not like Science and Literature and Classical Music and Philosophy and Art. You find me cold, unfeeling, selfish, don’t you? Very well: be off with you to the sort of people you like.

You think I like you to say that. But I haven’t forgot what you said a minute ago; and I won’t be coaxed round as if I was a baby or a puppy. If I can’t have kindness, I’ll have independence.

Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

Rising determinedly. I’ll let you see whether I’m dependent on you. If you can preach, I can teach. I’ll go and be a teacher.