Quotation by George Bernard Shaw

More Quotes From

Additional Sources

Tarleton, in Misalliance The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays with their Prefaces, vol. 4, ed. Dan H. Laurence (1972)Alfred Doolittle, in Pygmalion a member of the Caravan of the Curious, in The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God (1932)a naturalist, in The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God (1932)Anderson, in The Devil's Disciple The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays with their Prefaces, vol. 2, ed. Dan H. Laurence (1971)

Related Subjects

writers and writing (43) prose (23) philosophical (22) love (17) language (16) truth (15) criticism (15) inspirational (14) art (13)

Social questions are too sectional, too topical, too temporal to move a man to the mighty effort which is needed to produce great poetry. Prison reform may nerve Charles Reade to produce an effective and businesslike prose melodrama; but it could never produce Hamlet, Faust, or Peer Gynt.

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Anglo-Irish playwright, critic. First published in The Humanitarian (May 1895 ). "The Problem Play," The Drama Observed, ed. Bernard F. Dukore, Penn State Press (1993).

Cite this source Embed this quotation

Surprise me with a

The Columbia World of Quotations © 1996, Columbia University Press.
Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted by written agreement, the following are prohibited: copying substantial portions or the entirety of the work in machine readable form, making multiple printouts thereof, and other uses of the work inconsistent with U.S. and applicable foreign copyright and related laws.

Partners:Word Bloglines Citysearch The Daily Beast Ask Answers Ask Kids Life123 Reference Sendori