Hello Meerschaum,
This quotation by George Bernard Shaw is from Man and Superman in the
Epistle Dedicatory to Arthur Bingham Walkley in the year 1903.
Man and Superman - 1903
Epistle Dedicatory to Arthur Bingham Walkley
“My dear Walkley
You once asked me why I did not write a Don Juan play. The levity
with which you assumed this frightful responsibility has probably by
this time enabled you to forget it; but the day of reckoning has
arrived: here is your play! I say your play, because qui facit per
alium facit per se. Its profits, like its labor, belong to me: its
morals, its manners, its philosophy, its influence on the young, are
for you to justify.
(..)
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized
by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you
are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a
feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining
that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. And also
the only real tragedy in life is the being used by personally minded
men for purposes which you recognize to be base. All the rest is at
worst mere misfortune or mortality: this alone is misery, slavery,
hell on earth; and the revolt against it is the only force that offers
a man’s work to the poor artist, whom our personally minded rich
people would so willingly employ as pandar, buffoon, beauty monger,
sentimentalizer and the like.”
Source: Bartleby
http://www.bartleby.com/157/100.html
QUOTATION: “This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose
recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out
before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature
instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances
complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
And also the only real tragedy in life is being used by personally
minded men for purposes which you recognize to be base.”
ATTRIBUTION: “George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Anglo-Irish playwright,
critic. (1903). Man and Superman, epistle dedicatory, The Bodley Head
Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays with their Prefaces, vol. 2, ed. Dan H.
Laurence (1971).”
Pink Monkey: Quotations
http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/quotations/pmManSuperman06.asp
Additional information that may interest you:
Biography of George Bernard Shaw
http://www.bartleby.com/65/sh/Shaw-Geo.html
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