UNDERSHAFT. Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the difference between one young woman and another.
BARBARA. Quite true, Dolly.
CUSINS. I also want to avoid being a rascal.
UNDERSHAFT [with biting contempt] You lust for personal righteousness, for self-approval, for what you call a good conscience, for what Barbara calls salvation, for what I call patronizing people who are not so lucky as yourself.
CUSINS. I do not: all the poet in me recoils from being a good man. But there are things in me that I must reckon with: pity—
UNDERSHAFT. Pity! The scavenger of misery.
CUSINS. Well, love.
UNDERSHAFT. I know. You love the needy and the outcast: you love the oppressed races, the negro, the Indian ryot, the Pole, the Irishman. Do you love the Japanese? Do you love the Germans? Do you love the English?
CUSINS. No. Every true Englishman detests the English. We are the wickedest nation on earth; and our success is a moral horror.
UNDERSHAFT. That is what comes of your gospel of love, is it?