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George Bernard Shaw.... The Nobel Prize in Literature 1925 !

July 6, 2008

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was born in Dublin, the son of a civil servant.

His education was irregular, due to his dislike of any organized training. After working in an estate agent's office for a while he moved to London as a young man (1876), where he established himself as a leading music and theatre critic in the eighties and nineties and became a prominent member of the Fabian Society, for which he composed many pamphlets.

He began his literary career as a novelist; as a fervent advocate of the new theatre of Ibsen (The Quintessence of Ibsenism, 1891) he decided to write plays in order to illustrate his criticism of the English stage. His earliest dramas were called appropriately Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant (1898). Among these, Widower's Houses and Mrs. Warren's Profession savagely attack social hypocrisy, while in plays such as Arms and the Man and The Man of Destiny the criticism is less fierce. Shaw's radical rationalism, his utter disregard of conventions, his keen dialectic interest and verbal wit often turn the stage into a forum of ideas, and nowhere more openly than in the famous discourses on the Life Force, «Don Juan in Hell», the third act of the dramatization of woman's love chase of man, Man and Superman (1903).

In the plays of his later period discussion sometimes drowns the drama, in Back to Methuselah (1921), although in the same period he worked on his masterpiece Saint Joan (1923), in which he rewrites the well-known story of the French maiden and extends it from the Middle Ages to the present.Other important plays by Shaw are Caesar and Cleopatra (1901), a historical play filled with allusions to modern times, and Androcles and the Lion (1912), in which he exercised a kind of retrospective history and from modern movements drew deductions for the Christian era.

In Major Barbara (1905), one of Shaw's most successful «discussion» plays, the audience's attention is held by the power of the witty argumentation that man can achieve aesthetic salvation only through political activity, not as an individual.

The Doctor's Dilemma (1906), facetiously classified as a tragedy by Shaw, is really a comedy the humour of which is directed at the medical profession. Candida (1898), with social attitudes toward sex relations as objects of his satire, and Pygmalion (1912), a witty study of phonetics as well as a clever treatment of middle-class morality and class distinction, proved some of Shaw's greatest successes on the stage.

It is a combination of the dramatic, the comic, and the social corrective that gives Shaw's comedies their special flavour.

Shaw's complete works appeared in thirty-six volumes between 1930 and 1950, the year of his death.

Some of George Bernard Shaw Quotes:

A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

If any religion had the chance of ruling over England, nay Europe within the next hundred years, it could be Islam.

I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing phase of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. I have studied him - the wonderful man and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Savior of Humanity.

I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much needed peace and happiness: I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today.

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14 Comments
Comment on this

06:09 AM Jul 31 2008
lchkthg Viet Nam	I can feel that he's a sweet man!!!

11:18 PM Jul 29 2008
pink angel Saudi Arabia	my opinio about him , is that he is a wonderful man and he worte an awesom books i studied most of them in the collage , thank you for reminding me with this great writier

11:18 PM Jul 29 2008

pink angel
Saudi Arabia

my opinio about him , is that he is a wonderful man and he worte an awesom books i studied most of them in the collage , thank you for reminding me with this great writier

04:21 AM Jul 28 2008
seren sunshine Turkey	he is very clever!

04:21 AM Jul 28 2008

seren sunshine
Turkey

he is very clever!

03:06 AM Jul 26 2008
imaazh United Arab Emirates	i wish i can be like him

03:06 AM Jul 26 2008

imaazh
United Arab Emirates

i wish i can be like him

02:49 AM Jul 24 2008
Evachen China	a brilliant man!

02:49 AM Jul 24 2008

Evachen
China

a brilliant man!

08:39 AM Jul 22 2008
jenny_emo United States	seems interesting

08:39 AM Jul 22 2008

jenny_emo
United States

seems interesting

07:27 AM Jul 21 2008
valh Mauritania	it is good to know about this great writer who was a star in the sky of English literature. So, thanks for the information you introduced about him.

07:27 AM Jul 21 2008

valh
Mauritania

it is good to know about this great writer who was a star in the sky of English literature. So, thanks for the information you introduced about him.

02:15 AM Jul 20 2008
figi Turkey	i love this guy and his mind:) "the worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them. that's the essence of inhumanity." "A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing." "Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough." "Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history." "I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize." "Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will." "Lack of money is the root of all evil." "Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh." "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." "The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." "When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth." "You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"" "There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it." "Do you know what a pessimist is?" "A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it." "Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn." "My way of joking is to tell the truth. It is the funniest joke in the world." and i like his dialogues:P George Bernard Shaw telegrammed Winston Churchill just prior to the opening of Major Barbara: "Have reserved two tickets for first night. Come and bring a friend if you have one." Churchill wired back, "Impossible to come to first night. Will come to second night, if you have one."

02:15 AM Jul 20 2008

figi
Turkey

i love this guy and his mind:)

"the worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them. that's the essence of inhumanity."

"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."

"Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough."

"Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history."

"I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize."

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will."

"Lack of money is the root of all evil."

"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."

"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."

"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one."

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

"When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth."

"You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?""

"There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it."

"Do you know what a pessimist is?" "A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it."

"Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn."

"My way of joking is to tell the truth. It is the funniest joke in the world."

and i like his dialogues:P

George Bernard Shaw telegrammed Winston Churchill just prior to the opening of Major Barbara: "Have reserved two tickets for first night. Come and bring a friend if you have one."

Churchill wired back, "Impossible to come to first night. Will come to second night, if you have one."

10:25 AM Jul 19 2008
calipha3 Egypt	Super man.

10:25 AM Jul 19 2008

calipha3
Egypt

Super man.

10:23 AM Jul 19 2008
calipha3 Egypt	He is a brilliant man, I read some of his works, such a amazing things!

10:23 AM Jul 19 2008

calipha3
Egypt

He is a brilliant man, I read some of his works, such a amazing things!

06:22 AM Jul 19 2008
Fred China	hehe, excellent! a great man@

07:40 AM Jul 11 2008
bonnie-w Tuvalu	good one.

07:40 AM Jul 11 2008

bonnie-w
Tuvalu

good one.

11:59 AM Jul 09 2008
ice1234 India	Great...... I am having very much interest in literature.... your writing about literature make us more passionate about reading.....

11:59 AM Jul 09 2008

ice1234
India

Great......

I am having very much interest in literature....

your writing about literature make us more passionate about reading.....

03:41 AM Jul 07 2008
Khatun Azerbaijan	Thanx for interesting lesson, friend. I like this writer so much. Especially his novel "Pygmalion" and the movies on it "My Fair Lady". I can watch it over and over.

03:41 AM Jul 07 2008

Khatun
Azerbaijan

Thanx for interesting lesson, friend. I like this writer so much. Especially his novel "Pygmalion" and the movies on it "My Fair Lady". I can watch it over and over.

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