How we cite our quotes: (Act.Line)
Quote #1
It's not pleasant for me, either, especially if you are still so childish that you must make it worse by a display of embarrassment. It is only in the middle classes, Stephen, that people get into a state of dumb helpless horror when they find that there are wicked people in the world. In our class, we have to decide what is to be done with wicked people; and nothing should disturb our self-possession. Now ask your question properly. (1.53)
Lady Brit becomes annoyed with Stephen when he gets tongue-tied at his mistaken impression that his father had a child out of wedlock. She turns the moment into an opportunity to lecture Stephen on behaviors and attitudes that are appropriate for his class, as opposed to what would be okay among the "middle classes."
Quote #2
Oh yes: they married just as your father did; and they were rich enough to buy land for their own children and leave them well provided for. But they always adopted and trained some foundling to succeed them in the business; and of course they always quarrelled with their wives furiously over it. Your father was adopted in that way; and he pretends to consider himself bound to keep up the tradition and adopt somebody to leave the business to. Of course I was not going to stand that. There may have been some reason for it when the Undershafts could only marry women in their own class, whose sons were not fit to govern great estates. But there could be no excuse for passing over my son. (1.61)
Here, Lady B makes a curious statement about her own class: Apparently the women in it have historically not necessarily produced men with the character necessary to be lords of the land—Lady B being a very notable exception, we're sure. Anyway, Andrew insists on continuing the tradition of giving a foundling the opportunity to be the fabulously wealthy overlord of the Undershaft fortune . . .
Quote #3
I'll tell you why. Fust: I'm intelligent—ff ff f! it's rotten cold here [he dances a step or two]--yes: intelligent beyond the station o life into which it has pleased the capitalists to call me; and they don't like a man that sees through em. Second, an intelligent bein needs a doo share of appiness; so I drink somethink cruel when I get the chawnce. Third, I stand by my class and do as little as I can so's to leave arf the job for me fellow workers. Fourth, I'm fly enough to know wots inside the law and wots outside it; and inside it I do as the capitalists do: pinch wot I can lay me ands on. In a proper state of society I am sober, industrious and honest: in Rome, so to speak, I do as the Romans do. Wots the consequence? When trade is bad—and it's rotten bad just now—and the employers az to sack arf their men, they generally start on me. (2.8)
Snobby Price is explaining his present circumstances to Rummy. Basically, he seems himself as a victim of class—and his own superior intelligence, which makes his capitalist overlords prickly with him and less likely to keep him employed. This sounds kind of like those kids who claim they would be getting straight As, except they're super bored in class, doesn't it?