I have had my share of vanity; for as a young man I was admired by women; and as a statue I am praised by art critics.
 George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903). copy citation

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Author George Bernard Shaw
Source Man and Superman
Topic youth praise vanity
Date 1903
Language English
Reference
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Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3328/3328-h/3328-h.htm

Context

“That is all very eloquent, my young friend; but if you had lived to Ana's age, or even to mine, you would have learned that the people who get rid of the fear of poverty and children and all the other family troubles, and devote themselves to having a good time of it, only leave their minds free for the fear of old age and ugliness and impotence and death. The childless laborer is more tormented by his wife's idleness and her constant demands for amusement and distraction than he could be by twenty children; and his wife is more wretched than he. I have had my share of vanity; for as a young man I was admired by women; and as a statue I am praised by art critics. But I confess that had I found nothing to do in the world but wallow in these delights I should have cut my throat. When I married Ana's mother—or perhaps, to be strictly correct, I should rather say when I at last gave in and allowed Ana's mother to marry me—I knew that I was planting thorns in my pillow, and that marriage for me, a swaggering young officer thitherto unvanquished, meant defeat and capture.” source

Meaning and analysis

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