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"I have the right to choose the father of my own children," she declared, and then wrote to George Bernard Shaw: "Will you be the father of my next child? A combination of my beauty and your brains would startle the world," but he replied: "I must decline your offer with thanks, for the child might have my beauty and your brains."
--
Nadine Dreyer, in "Isadore Duncan : Dancer as Plaything of Fate" in A Century of Sundays : 100 years of Breaking News in the Sunday Papers (2006), p. 65; the anecdote provided here does not cite earlier sources, and though widely attributed to an exchange between Duncan and Shaw, the earliest form of it yet located is in 10,000 Jokes, Toasts & Stories (1939) by Lewis & Faye Copeland, which simply has an unidentified woman offering to have a child with Shaw, saying "think of the child with your brains and my beauty" and him replying "But what if he were to have your brains and my beauty?"

 

Isadora Duncan

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[Isadora Duncan] wrote to George Bernard Shaw: "Will you be the father of my next child? A combination of my beauty and your brains would startle the world," but he replied: "I must decline your offer with thanks, for the child might have my beauty and your brains."

 

George Bernard Shaw

 

"But he has nothing on at all," said a little child at last. "Good heavens! listen to the voice of an innocent child," said the father, and one whispered to the other what the child had said. "But he has nothing on at all," cried at last the whole people. That made a deep impression upon the emperor, for it seemed to him that they were right; but he thought to himself, "Now I must bear up to the end." And the chamberlains walked with still greater dignity, as if they carried the train which did not exist.

 

Hans Christian Andersen

 

Sometimes the little boy who calls me father brings me an invitation from his mother: "I shall be so pleased if you will come and see me," and I always reply in some such words as these: "Dear madam, I decline." And if David asks why I decline, I explain that it is because I have no desire to meet the woman.
"Come this time, father," he urged lately, "for it is her birthday, and she is twenty-six," which is so great an age to David, that I think he fears she cannot last much longer.

 

J. M. Barrie

 

"But I can't devote myself entirely to a child," said she; "it may die — which is not at all improbable."
"But, with care, many a delicate infant has become a strong man or woman."
"But it may grow so intolerably like its father that I shall hate it."
"That is not likely; it is a little girl, and strongly resembles its mother."

 

Anne Bronte

 

"All the same," said the Scarecrow, "I shall ask for brains instead of a heart; for a fool would not know what to do with a heart if he had one."
"I shall take the heart," returned the Tin Woodman; "for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world."

 

L. Frank Baum