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
What this quote means
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.
Themes
HappinessLifeAcceptanceBittersweetDreaming
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during a discussion on the nature of happiness in a philosophy class.
More from George Bernard Shaw
All quotes →Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.
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Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
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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?
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Treat a friend as a person who may someday become your enemy; an enemy as a person who may someday become your friend.
George Bernard ShawRead
The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
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