“As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.”

— George Bernard Shaw , Overruled

1910s
Source: Overruled (1912)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death." by George Bernard Shaw?

George Bernard Shaw 413

Irish playwright 1856–1950

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

“Sirs, I have tested your machine. It adds a new terror to life and makes death a long-felt want.”

Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852–1917) English actor and theatre manager

Page 183
His reply to a gramophone company who had asked for a testimonial.
Beerbohm Tree (1956)

“I take no pride in hopeless longing; I wouldn't hold a stillborn aspiration. I'd want to have it, to make it, to live it.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

“I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death!”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

5 April 1944
The Diary of a Young Girl (1942 - 1944)
Variant: I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met.

“I do not have a psychiatrist and I do not want one, for the simple reason that if he listened to me long enough, he might become disturbed.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

"Carpe Noctem, If You Can", Credos and Curios (1962)
From other writings

“I’ve lived a long time,” Magnus said. “So many years, and no, it doesn’t feel like enough. I won’t lie and say it does. I want to live on—partly because of you, Alec. I have never wanted to live so much as I have these past few months, with you.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

“If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody.”

James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room

Source: Giovanni's Room

“If I can anyway contribute to the diversion or improvement of the country in which I live, I shall leave it, when I am summoned out of it, with the satisfaction of thinking that I have not lived in vain.”

Stephen Grellet (1773–1855) American Quaker missionary

Statement in The Spectator (1711), as quoted in The Reign of Queen Anne (1902) by Justin McCarthy
Misattributed

“I may have lost the election but I have not lost my reason to live.”

Doris Haddock (1910–2010) American political activist

“Be assured I will die as I have lived, and that you will have no reason to blush for me.”

Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763–1798) Irish politician

Letter to his wife, Matilda Tone (10 November 1798), quoted in T. W. Moody, R. B. McDowell and C. J. Woods (eds.), The Writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone, 1763–98, Volume III: France, the Rhine, Lough Swilly and Death of Tone, January 1797 to November 1798 (2007), p. 403

“As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

George Bernard Shaw 413

Related quotes

Related topics