What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
George Bernard ShawRead
I feel nothing but the accursed happiness I have dreaded all my life long: the happiness that comes as life goes, the happiness of yielding and dreaming instead of resisting and doing, the sweetness of the fruit that is going rotten.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a paradoxical feeling of happiness that is accompanied by dread and decay.
In this quote, George Bernard Shaw reflects on a complex and unsettling form of happiness that he has experienced throughout his life. It speaks to the idea that true happiness may be linked to acceptance and passivity, rather than active pursuit, and it also carries a sense of bittersweetness, as this happiness is intertwined with the awareness of life's ephemeral and decaying nature.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a discussion on the nature of happiness in a philosophy class.
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.
I got rhythm, I got music, I got my man- Who could ask for anything more?
Happiness comes from spiritual wealth, not material wealth... Happiness comes from giving, not getting. If we try hard to bring happiness to others, we cannot stop it from coming to us also. To get joy, we must give it, and to keep joy, we must scatter it. .
Thus happiness depends, as nature shows, less on exterior things than most suppose.
Once you have heard a strange audience burst into laughter at a film you directed, you realize what the word joy is all about.
When you do not know what to do or which way to turn, smile. This will relax your mind and let the sunshine of happiness into your soul.
Happiness radiates like the fragrance from a flower and draws all good things towards you.
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