If I refuse to allow my leg to be amputated, its mortification and my death may prove that I was wrong; but if I let the leg go, nobody can ever prove that it would not have mortified had I been obstinate. Operation is therefore the safe side for the surgeon as well as the lucrative side.

A succession of eye-openers each involving the repudiation of some previously held belief.

He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

Treat persons who profess to be able to cure disease as you treat fortune tellers.

I hate the poor and look forward eagerly to their extermination.

I wish to boast that Pygmalion has been an extremely successful play all over Europe and North America as well as at home. 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.

People must not be forced to adopt me as their favourite author, even for their own good.