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The British are apt to make merits of their stupidities, and to represent their various incapacities as points of good breeding.
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My method of getting a play across the footlights is like a revolver shooting: every line has a bullet in it and comes with an explosion.
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For nearly twenty years I have been a published author... But I have never yet seen a book of mine offered for sale in a shop window.
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The conversion of Paul was no conversion at all; it was Paul who converted the religion that has raised one man above sin and death.
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The domestic career is no more natural to all women than the military career is natural to all men.
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Civilized society is one huge bourgeoisie: no nobleman dares now shock his greengrocer.
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To a mathematician the eleventh means only a single unit: to the bushman who cannot count further than his ten fingers it is an incalculable myriad.
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When the military man approaches, the world locks up its spoons and packs off its womankind.
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Even if animal experimentation was proved to be of value, it would be morally wrong.
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Liquor is the chloroform which enables the poor man to endure the painful operation of living.
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Very few people can afford to be poor.
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A true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.
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Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.
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Vitality is a woman is a blind fury of creation.
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The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.
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We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.
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Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich-something for nothing.
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When you want to put something into your part that is not in the play, you must ask the author-or some other author-to lead up to the interpolation for you. Never forget that the effect of a line may depend not on its delivery, but on something said earlier in the play, either by somebody else or by yourself, and that if you change it, it may be necessary to change the whole first act as well.
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It would positively be a relief to me to dig Shakespeare up and throw stones at him.
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All this struggling and striving to make the world better is a great mistake. Not that it's wrong to try to improve the world if you know how but simply because struggling and striving are the worst possible ways to go about doing anything!
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Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.
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If women were particular about men's characters, they would never get married at all.
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What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.
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Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay.