Bernard Shaw And Alfred Douglas: A Correspondence

Why do you recommend me to go to Russia? I've been there. It is a paradise: no ladies and gentlemen there.

The reason your Catholicism has ended in darkness of the soul is that becoming a Catholic (being born to it is quite a different thing) is only a sociable way of becoming an atheist. You put the church between you and God, and never mention God again. You never get any further, and won't read Einstein, or Show on Creative Evolution. The miraculous world goes dead for you. You change your shoes once a year, but won't change your religion, which wears out faster, once in ten years.

There is another queer difference between us. I have never liked myself much. Your self-love (a very valuable quality, as I know by my experience of the lack of it) is extraordinary. Whatever you do you are delighted with.