Just as the historian can teach no real history until he has cured his readers of the romantic delusion that the greatness of a queen consists in her being a pretty woman and having her head cut off, so the playwright of the first order can do nothing with his audience until he has cured them of looking at the stage through the keyhole, and sniffing round the theatre as prurient people sniff round the divorce court.

We're human beings we are - all of us - and that's what people are liable to forget. Human beings don't like peace and goodwill and everybody loving everybody else. However much they may think they do, they don't really because they're not made like that. Human beings love eating and drinking and loving and hating. They also like showing off, grabbing all they can, fighting for their rights and bossing anybody who'll give them half a chance.

Sister, you're trying to keep me alive as an old curiosity, but I'm done, I'm finished, I'm going to die.

As people get their opinions so largely from the newspapers they read... But the Press is not free, the newspapers are owned by rich men.

I prefer the man who calls his nonsense a mystery to him who who pretends it is a weighed, measured, analyzed fact.

I never climbed any ladder: I have achieved eminence by sheer gravitation.

Idiots are always in favour of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favour of equality.