修養 /智慧/美貌

看張愛玲的“流言”，“談跳舞”那篇文章談到肖伯納的“長生(Back to Methuselah)”，非常非常感興趣，於是去圖書館找肖伯納的書，可惜很少。“匹克梅梁”可以說是最出名的了，聽錢鍾書談過，又改編成了電影窈窕淑女，讓赫本來演。
看了便停不下來，被深深的吸引，很久沒有這麼有興致的讀完一個故事了（甚至村上春樹的短篇小說，有時也不是受興趣驅使，而是受想讀完的慾望驅使） 。
想起某個節目或是電影裡，問一個男人對女人最看重是什麼：智慧，美貌還是修養。當時我的答案是智慧，而那個人給的答案是修養。自己又想了下，覺得用智慧這種天生基因決定的東西來評價一個人有點不公平，只有修養才真是決定一個人高低的標準吧。但是看了這個戲劇，原來修養只是這麼簡單的事，這麼容易修煉，upper class和lower class的區別就這麼簡單被修正了。

HIGGINS: Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making trouble. There's only one way of escaping trouble; and that's killing things. Cowards, you notice, are always shrieking to have troublesome people killed.

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.

HIGGINS: The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another

DOOLITTLE: ask you, what am I? I'm one of the ndeserving poor: that's what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he's up agen middle class morality all the time. If there's anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it's always the same story: "You're undeserving; so you can't have it." But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow's that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don't need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don't eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of amusement, cause I'm a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything.

DOOLITTLE: Ten pounds is a lot of money: it makes a man feel prudent like; and then goodbye to happiness. You give me what I ask you, Governor: not a penny more, and not a penny less.

DOOLITTLE: It's making a gentleman of me that I object to. Who asked him to make a gentleman of me? I was happy. I was free. I touched pretty nigh everybody for money when I wanted it, same as I touched you, Henry Higgins. Now I am worrited; tied neck and heels; and everybody touches me for money. It's a fine thing for you, says my solicitor. Is it? says I. You mean it's a good thing for you, I says. When I was a poor man and had a solicitor once when they found a pram in the dust cart, he got me off, and got shut of me and got me shut of him as quick as he could. Same with the doctors: used to shove me out of the hospital before I could hardly stand on my legs, and nothing to pay. Now they finds out that I'm not a healthy man and can't live unless they looks after me twice a day. In the house I'm not let do a hand's turn for myself: somebody else must do it and touch me for it. A year ago I hadn't a relative in the world except two or three that wouldn't speak to me. Now I've fifty, and not a decent week's wages among the lot of them. I have to live for others and not for myself: that's middle class morality.