What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
George Bernard ShawRead
Nobody could stand an eternity of Heaven.
Interpretation
Eternal bliss can become unbearable and monotonous over time.
George Bernard Shaw suggests that even a state of perfect happiness, like Heaven, could become tiresome if experienced for eternity. This reflects on the nature of human desires, which often thrive on variety and contrast; without challenges or change, even the most pleasurable experiences can lose their value.
In practice
In a discussion about the nature of happiness, one might quote Shaw to illustrate the limits of eternal pleasure.
What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.
Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
Treat a friend as a person who may someday become your enemy; an enemy as a person who may someday become your friend.
The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.
It is the responsibility of every Christ-centred follower to carve out a satisfying life under the loving rule of God or else sin will start to look good.
The bourgeois novel is the greatest enemy of truth and honesty that was ever invented. It's a vast, sentimentalizing structure that reassures the reader, and at every point, offers the comfort of secure moral frameworks and recognizable characters.
It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.
There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America.
Thus Carol hit upon the tragedy of old age, which is not that it is less vigorous than youth, but that it is not needed by youth.
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