What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
George Bernard ShawRead
Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that home life can be confining and unnatural, akin to a bird being trapped in a cage.
George Bernard Shaw's quote highlights the idea that what we consider the comfort of home can actually serve as a constraint, limiting our freedom and natural instincts. Just as a cockatoo might feel out of place and restricted in a cage, individuals may find the expectations and routines of home life stifling, suggesting a deeper reflection on the nature of domesticity and personal freedom.
In practice
Using this quote in a discussion on the pressures of family life during a psychology seminar.
What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.
Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
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?
Treat a friend as a person who may someday become your enemy; an enemy as a person who may someday become your friend.
The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
The rage for wanting to conclude is one of the most deadly and most fruitless manias to befall humanity. Each religion and each philosophy has pretended to have God to itself, to measure the infinite, and to know the recipe for happiness. What arrogance and what nonsense! I see, to the contrary, that the greatest geniuses and the greatest works have never concluded.
There is nothing wrapped in my turban but God.
Llonio said life was a net for luck; to Hevydd the Smith life was a forge; and to Dwyvach the Weaver-Woman a loom. They spoke truly, for it is all of these. But you,' Taran said, his eyes meeting the potter's, 'you have shown me life is one thing more. It is clay to be shaped, as raw clay on a potter's wheel.
The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.
Poverty is a reaper: it harvests everything inside us that might have made us capable of social intercourse with others, and leaves us empty, purged of feeling, so that we may endure all the darkness of the present day.
Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the Church would suit me better.
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