PICKERING: Excuse the straight question, Higgins. Are you a man of good character where women are concerned?
HIGGINS: Have you ever met a man of good character where women are concerned?
PICKERING: Yes: very frequently.
HIGGINS: 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.
PICKERING: At what, for example?
HIGGINS: Oh, Lord know! i suppose the woman wants to live her own life; and the man wants to live his; and each tries to drag the other on to the wrong track. one wants to go north and the other south; and the result is that both have to go east, though they both hate the east wind.
~Act II
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 HILL] What do you know of poetry? [To MRS. HILL] What do you know of science? [Indicating FREDDY] What do he know of art or science or anything else? What the devil do you imagine I know of philosophy?
~Act III
LIZA: There's lots of women has to make their husbands drunk to make them fit to live with. 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.
~Act III
LIZA: 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.
~Act V
HIGGINS: I can do without anybody. I have my own soul: my own spark of divine fire. But I shall miss you, Eliza. I have learnt something from your idiotic notions: I confess that humbly and grateful. And I have grown accustomed to your voice and appearance. I like them, rather.
LIZA: Well, you have both of them on your gramophone and in your book of photographs. When you feel lonely without me, you can turn the machine on. It's got no feelings to hurt.
HIGGINS: 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.
LIZA: Oh, you are a devil. You can twist the heart in a girl as easy as some could twist her arms to hurt her [ . . .] you don't care a bit for me.
HIGGINS: I care for life, for humanity; and you are a part of it that has come my way and been built into my house. What more can you or anyone ask?
LIZA: I won't care for anybody that doesn't care for me.
~Act V
HIGGINS: It you're going to be a lady, you'll have to give up feeling neglected if the men you know don't spend half their time snivelling over you and the other half giving you black eyes. 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. Marry some sentimental hog or other with lots of money, and a thick pair of lips to kiss you with and thick pair of boots to kick you with. If you can't appreciate what you've got, you'd better get what you can appreciate.
~Act V
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