Quote added by staff
...occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active, which is pleasanter than any happiness until you are tired of it. That is why it is necessary to happiness that one should be tired. Music after dinner is pleasant: music before breakfast is so unpleasant as to be clearly unnatural. To people who are not overworked holidays are a nuisance. To people who are, and who can afford them, they are a troublesome necessity.
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
![]()
The Horror of the Perpetual Holiday
It will be said here that, on the contrary, heaven is always conceived as a perpetual holiday, and that whoever is not born to an independent income is striving for one or longing for one because it gives holidays for life. To which I reply, first, that heaven, as conventionally conceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable, that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty of people have... Shaw, George Bernard
Excerpt from Treatise on Parents and Children · This quote is tagged Hell · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.
These people bookmarked this quote:
-
ChefChivesI'm male, single
-
prjr
I'm male
More on the author
- Find photos of this author
- Consult wikipedia for the author
This quote around the web
- Find photos of this author
- Consult wikipedia for the author

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.