“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.”

“The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.”

“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? They are more true: they are the only things that are true.”

“Your weak side, my diabolic friend, is that you have always been a gull: you take Man at his own valuation. Nothing would flatter him more than your opinion of him. He loves to think of himself as bold and bad. He is neither one nor the other: he is only a coward. Call him tyrant, murderer, pirate, bully; and he will adore you, and swagger about with the consciousness of having the blood of the old sea kings in his veins. Call him liar and thief; and he will only take an action against you for libel. But call him coward; and he will go mad with rage: he will face death to outface that stinging truth. Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one: and that one is his cowardice. Yet all his civilization is founded on his cowardice, on his abject tameness, which he calls his respectability. There are limits to what a mule or an ass will stand; but Man will suffer himself to be degraded until his vileness becomes so loathsome to his oppressors that they themselves are forced to reform it.”

“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 wont 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: I think a woman fetching a man's slippers is a disgusting sight: did I ever fetch your slippers? I think a good deal more of you for throwing them in my face. No use slaving for me and then saying you want to be cared for: who cares for a slave?”

“Who asked him to make a gentleman of me? I was happy. I was free. I touched pretty nigh everybody for money when I wanted it, same as I touched you, Henry Higgins. Now I am worrited; tied neck and heels; and everybody touches me for money. It's a fine thing for you, says my solicitor. Is it? says I. You mean it's a good thing for you, I says. When I was a poor man and had a solicitor once when they found a pram in the dust cart, he got me off, and got shut of me and got me shut of him as quick as he could. Same with the doctors: used to shove me out of the hospital before I could hardly stand on my legs, and nothing to pay. Now they finds out that I'm not a healthy man and cant live unless they looks after me twice a day. In the house I'm not let do a hand's turn for myself: somebody else must do it and touch me for it. A year ago I hadn't a relative in the world except two or three that wouldn't speak to me. Now I've fifty, and not a decent week's wages among the lot of them. I have to live for others and not for myself: that's middle class morality.”

“THE QUESTION seems a hopeless one after 2000 years of resoluteadherence to the old cry of “Not this man, but Barabbas.”Yet it is beginning to look as if Barabbas was a failure, inspite of his strong right hand, his victories, his empires, hismillions of money, and his moralities and churches and politicalconstitutions. “This man” has not been a failure yet;for nobody has ever been sane enough to try his way. But hehas had one quaint triumph. Barabbas has stolen his nameand taken his cross as a standard. There is a sort of complimentin that. There is even a sort of loyalty in it, like that ofthe brigand who breaks every law and yet claims to be apatriotic subject of the king who makes them. We have alwayshad a curious feeling that though we crucified Christon a stick, he somehow managed to get hold of the right endof it, and that if we were better men we might try his plan.There have been one or two grotesque attempts at it by inadequate people, such as the Kingdom of God in Munster,which was ended by crucifixion so much more atrocious thanthe one on Calvary that the bishop who took the part ofAnnas went home and died of horror. But responsible peoplehave never made such attempts. The moneyed, respectable,capable world has been steadily anti-Christian andBarabbasque since the crucifixion; and the specific doctrineof Jesus has not in all that time been put into political orgeneral social practice.”