George Bernard Shaw

“ CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It's prudent to gain the whole world and lose your own soul. But don't forget that your soul sticks to you if you stick to it; but the world has a way of slipping through your fingers.
ELLIE [wearily, leaving him and beginning to wander restlessly about the room] . I'm sorry, Captain Shotover; but it's no use talking like that to me. Old-fashioned people are no use to me. ”

“ Yes. You really are a terribly commanding person. What's the matter?
HECTOR. I do not know how to manage your friend Randall. No doubt you do.
LADY UTTERWORD. Randall: have you been making yourself ridiculous, as usual? I can see it in your face. Really, you are the most pettish creature.
RANDALL. You know quite well, Ariadne, that I have not an ounce of pettishness in my disposition. I have made myself perfectly pleasant here. I have remained absolutely cool and imperturbable in the face of a burglar. Imperturbability is almost too strong a point of mine. ”

“ I see my daughters and their men living foolish lives of romance and sentiment and snobbery. I see you, the younger generation, turning from their romance and sentiment and snobbery to money and comfort and hard common sense. I was ten times happier on the bridge in the typhoon, or frozen into Arctic ice for months in darkness, than you or they have ever been. You are looking for a rich husband. ”

“ I shall pretend to sell myself to Boss Mangan to save my soul from the poverty that is damning me by inches.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Riches will damn you ten times deeper. Riches won't save even your body.
ELLIE. Old-fashioned again. We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies. I am afraid you are no use to me, Captain. ”

“ MRS HUSHABYE. Do you suppose you can bully me, you miserable little matrimonial adventurer?
ELLIE. Every woman who hasn't any money is a matrimonial adventurer. It's easy for you to talk: you have never known what it is to want money; and you can pick up men as if they were daisies. I am poor and respectable—
MRS HUSHABYE [interrupting] . Ho! respectable! How did you pick up Mangan? How did you pick up my husband? You have the audacity to tell me that I am a— a— a—
ELLIE. A siren. So you are. You were born to lead men by the nose: if you weren't, Marcus would have waited for me, perhaps. ”

“ MANGAN. Well, you have a nerve.
MRS HUSHABYE. And you have a heart, Alfy, a whimpering little heart, but a real one. [Releasing him suddenly] . Now run and make it up with Ellie. She has had time to think what to say to you, which is more than I had [she goes out quickly into the garden by the port door] .
MANGAN. That woman has a pair of hands that go right through you.
ELLIE. Still in love with her, in spite of all we said about you?
MANGAN. Are all women like you two? Do they never think of anything about a man except what they can get out of him? ”

“ Well, don't waste your jealousy on my moustache. Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary hero that supplants us all in the long run. Besides, jealousy does not belong to your easy man-of-the-world pose, which you carry so well in other respects.
RANDALL. Really, Hushabye, I think a man may be allowed to be a gentleman without being accused of posing.
HECTOR. It is a pose like any other. In this house we know all the poses: our game is to find out the man under the pose. The man under your pose is apparently Ellie's favorite, Othello. ”

“ I did not let the fear of death govern my life; and my reward was, I had my life. You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life; and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live. ”

“ MRS HUSHABYE. Then the creature is a fraud even as a captain of industry!
MAZZINI. I am afraid all the captains of industry are what you call frauds, Mrs Hushabye.Of course there are some manufacturers who really do understand their own works; but they don't make as high a rate of profit as Mangan does. I assure you Mangan is quite a good fellow in his way. He means well.
MRS HUSHABYE. He doesn't look well. He is not in his first youth, is he?
MAZZINI. After all, no husband is in his first youth for very long, Mrs Hushabye. And men can't afford to marry in their first youth nowadays. ”

“ ELLIE [dreamily] . I should have thought nothing else mattered to old men. They can't be very interested in what is going to happen to themselves.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. A man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full; so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child again. ”

“ Old-fashioned people think you can have a soul without money. They think the less money you have, the more soul you have. Young people nowadays know better. A soul is a very expensive thing to keep: much more so than a motor car.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Is it? How much does your soul eat?
ELLIE. Oh, a lot. It eats music and pictures and books and mountains and lakes and beautiful things to wear and nice people to be with. In this country you can't have them without lots of money: that is why our souls are so horribly starved.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Mangan's soul lives on pig's food. ”

“ Bless you, dear Mrs Hushabye, what romantic ideas of business you have! Poor dear Mangan isn't a bit like that.
MRS HUSHABYE [scornfully] . Poor dear Mangan indeed!
MAZZINI. But he doesn't know anything about machinery. He never goes near the men: he couldn't manage them: he is afraid of them. I never can get him to take the least interest in the works: he hardly knows more about them than you do. People are cruelly unjust to Mangan: they think he is all rugged strength just because his manners are bad.
MRS HUSHABYE. Do you mean to tell me he isn't strong enough to crush poor little Ellie? ”

“ MANGAN. Of course you don't understand: what do you know about business? You just listen and learn. Your father's business was a new business; and I don't start new businesses: I let other fellows start them. They put all their money and their friends' money into starting them. They wear out their souls and bodies trying to make a success of them. They're what you call enthusiasts. But the first dead lift of the thing is too much for them; and they haven't enough financial experience. ”

“ HECTOR. Is it your notion of good form to give away Lady Utterword?
RANDALL [a childishly plaintive note breaking into his huff] . I have not said a word against Lady Utterword. This is just the conspiracy over again.
HECTOR. What conspiracy?
RANDALL. You know very well, sir. A conspiracy to make me out to be pettish and jealous and childish and everything I am not. Everyone knows I am just the opposite.
HECTOR [rising] . Something in the air of the house has upset you. It often does have that effect. [He goes to the garden door and calls Lady Utterword with commanding emphasis] . Ariadne! ”

“ It isn't my fault if I'm old and haven't a moustache like a bronze candlestick as your husband has. There are things no decent woman would do to a man—like a man hitting a woman in the breast.
Hesione, utterly shamed, sits down on the sofa and covers her face with her hands. Mangan sits down also on his chair and begins to cry like a child. Ellie stares at them. Mrs Hushabye, at the distressing sound he makes, takes down her hands and looks at him. She rises and runs to him. ”

“ Hector, Hector! [she runs out after him] .
RANDALL. Only nerves, I assure you. [He rises and follows her, waving the poker in his agitation] . Ariadne! Ariadne! For God's sake, be careful. You will— [he is gone] .
MAZZINI [rising] . How distressing! Can I do anything, I wonder?
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [promptly taking his chair and setting to work at the drawing-board] . No. Go to bed. Good-night.
MAZZINI [bewildered] . Oh! Perhaps you are right.
ELLIE. Good-night, dearest. [She kisses him] .
MAZZINI. Good-night, love. [He makes for the door, but turns aside to the bookshelves] . ”

“ When I see your father beaming at me with his moist, grateful eyes, regularly wallowing in gratitude, I sometimes feel I must tell him the truth or burst. What stops me is that I know he wouldn't believe me. ”

“ Later still you will sleep even in the morning; and you will awake tired, tired of life. You will never be free from dozing and dreams; the dreams will steal upon your work every ten minutes unless you can awaken yourself with rum. ”

“ RANDALL [foaming] . There is no animal in the world so hateful as a woman can be. You are a maddening devil. Hushabye, you will not believ I tell you that I have loved this demon all my life; but God knows I have paid for it [he sits down in the draughtsman's chair, weeping] .
LADY UTTERWORD [standing over him with triumphant contempt] . Cry-baby!
HECTOR [gravely, coming to him] . My friend, the Shotover sisters have two strange powers over men. They can make them love; and they can make them cry. Thank your stars that you are not married to one of them. ”

“ In the world for me there is Marcus and a lot of other men of whom one is just the same as another. Well, if I can't have love, that's no reason why I should have poverty. If Mangan has nothing else, he has money.
MRS HUSHABYE. And are there no YOUNG men with money?
ELLIE. Not within my reach. Besides, a young man would have the right to expect love from me, and would perhaps leave me when he found I could not give it to him. Rich young men can get rid of their wives, you know, pretty cheaply. ”

“ MRS HUSHABYE. And pray why don't you do without him if you're all so much cleverer?
MAZZINI. Oh, we couldn't: we should ruin the business in a year. I've tried; and I know. We should spend too much on everything. We should improve the quality of the goods and make them too dear. We should be sentimental about the hard cases among the work people. But Mangan keeps us in order. He is down on us about every extra halfpenny. We could never do without him. You see, he will sit up all night thinking of how to save sixpence. Won't Ellie make him jump, though, when she takes his house in hand! ”

“ You know, Ellie has remarkable strength of character. I think it is because I taught her to like Shakespeare when she was very young.
MRS HUSHABYE. [contemptuously] Shakespeare! The next thing you will tell me is that you could have made a great deal more money than Mangan. [She retires to the sofa, and sits down at the port end of it in the worst of humors] .
MAZZINI [following her and taking the other end] . No: I'm no good at making money. I don't care enough for it, somehow. I'm not ambitious! that must be it. Mangan is wonderful about money: he thinks of nothing else. ”

“ I feel nothing but the accursed happiness I have dreaded all my life long: the happiness that comes as life goes, the happiness of yielding and dreaming instead of resisting and doing, the sweetness of the fruit that is going rotten. ”

“ If we women were particular about men's characters, we should never get married at all, Mr Mangan. ”

“ Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world. ”

“ I knew that the surest way to ruin a man who doesn't know how to handle money is to give him some. ”

“ Mazzini resumes his seat. Randall sits down in the window-seat near the starboard door, again making a pendulum of his poker, and studying it as Galileo might have done. Hector sits on his left, in the middle. Mangan, forgotten, sits in the port corner. Lady Utterword takes the big chair. Captain Shotover goes into the pantry in deep abstraction. They all look after him: and Lady Utterword coughs consciously.
MRS HUSHABYE. So Billy Dunn was poor nurse's little romance. I knew there had been somebody.
RANDALL. They will fight their battles over again and enjoy themselves immensely. ”