“Happiness and Beauty are by-products.”

#102
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Nov. 2, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Happiness and Beauty are by-products." by George Bernard Shaw?
George Bernard Shaw photo
George Bernard Shaw 413
Irish playwright 1856–1950

Related quotes

George Bernard Shaw photo

“Riches and Art are spurious receipts for the production of Happiness and Beauty.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

#104
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Imelda Marcos photo

“The Philippines is where Asia wears a smile. Beautiful products can only be made by happy people.”

Imelda Marcos (1929) Former First Lady of the Philippines

At a press conference in Bloomingdale's, at the opening of the Philippine exhibit, cited in Ang Katipunan (May 1982).

Aldous Huxley photo

“Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasise from truth and beauty to comfort and hapiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't.”

Mustapha Mond, in Ch. 16<!-- p. 228-->
Source: Brave New World (1932)
Context: I'm interested in truth, I like science. But truth's a menace, science is a public danger. As dangerous as it's been beneficent. … It's curious … to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to imagine that it could go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasise from truth and beauty to comfort and hapiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everything, unrestricted scientific resarch was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled — after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for.

Aldous Huxley photo

“Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Essay "Distractions I" in Vedanta for the Western World (1945) edited by Christopher Isherwood

Norman Vincent Peale photo

“Happiness will never come if it's a goal in itself; happiness is a by-product of a commitment to worthy causes.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

The Power of Positive Living (1992), p. 63

Eleanor Roosevelt photo

“Happiness is not a goal… it's a by-product of a life well lived.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Variant: Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product.
Source: You Learn by Living (1960), p. 95
Context: Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively.

Edmund Burke photo

“Beauty is the promise of happiness.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Actually by Stendhal: "La beauté n'est que la promesse du bonheur" (Beauty is no more than the promise of happiness), in De L'Amour (1822), chapter 17
Misattributed

Ludwig Klages photo

“Beauty is but the cloak of happiness. Where joy tarries, there also is beauty.”

Ludwig Klages (1872–1956) German psychologist and philosopher

Source: Rhythmen und Runen (1944), p. 468

B.F. Skinner photo

“Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.”

B.F. Skinner (1904–1990) American behaviorist

Freedom and the control of men (1955/1956) American Scholar, 25 (1), 47-65.

“Happiness is a by-product. It is not a primary product of life. It is a thing which you suddenly realize you have because you're so delighted to be doing something which perhaps has nothing whatever to do with happiness.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

"Sunday Morning".
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)

Related topics