Quote of the day by George Bernard Shaw: 'Marriage is popular because it combines maximum temptation in life with maximum opportunity...' - A lesson on the complicated nature of love by the Irish playwright

Marriage has often been described through ideas of love, companionship and commitment, but George Bernard Shaw had a rather different way of looking at it. The Irish playwright, critic and social commentator was known for using humour and sharp observations to question things that people usually accepted without much thought. One such example is his line, "Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity." The quote appears in Man and Superman, his 1903 play, in the appendix titled Maxims for Revolutionists, under the section on marriage.

Quote of the day by George Bernard Shaw and its meaning

"Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity" - George Bernard Shaw

At first, the quote sounds like a simple joke about marriage, but Shaw was making a larger point about human behaviour. The word "temptation" in the sentence can be understood as the attraction, desire and emotional pull that can bring two people together. Marriage, in his view, does not remove those human impulses. Instead, it gives them a socially recognised setting. The word "opportunity", meanwhile, points towards the possibilities that marriage creates, whether that means companionship, family life, emotional closeness or simply the chance for two people to build a life together. Shaw puts the two ideas beside each other in a deliberately provocative way.


There is also another layer to the line. Shaw was rarely interested in giving people a comfortable answer, and his writing often tried to expose the gap between what society says about an institution and how people actually behave within it. The quote does not necessarily say that marriage is good or bad. Instead, it pokes fun at the reasons people are drawn towards it. Desire can be a powerful force, while marriage can provide an opportunity to act on, manage or organise that desire within a social arrangement. That is what gives the sentence its bite even more than a century after it was written.

The line also fits the broader argument of Man and Superman. The play was not simply a conventional romantic comedy. Shaw used its characters and discussions to examine ideas about relationships, society, politics and human development. The work includes the Revolutionist's Handbook and Maxims for Revolutionists, sections that allowed Shaw to move beyond the ordinary action of the play and make wider observations about society.

George Bernard Shaw had a difficult start

George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin on July 26, 1856, into a Protestant family that was not particularly wealthy. His father, George Carr Shaw, worked in the grain trade and struggled with alcoholism, while his mother, Lucinda Elizabeth Gurly Shaw, had strong interests in music and singing. Shaw's childhood was therefore not the comfortable upbringing that might be expected from someone who would later become one of Britain's best-known writers. The National Trust describes the family as down-at-heel and notes that Shaw grew up in difficult circumstances.

His formal education was not something he enjoyed. According to the Nobel Prize biography, his education was irregular because he disliked organised schooling. By his teenage years he was working in an estate agent's office. His mother's influence, however, helped him develop a strong interest in music, art and literature, and these interests became more important to him than the conventional education he had rejected.

In 1876, Shaw left Dublin for London. He had decided that he wanted to become a writer, but success did not come quickly. He spent much of his early life in London reading and educating himself, including long periods in the British Museum Reading Room. His first attempts at becoming a novelist were unsuccessful, with five novels being rejected before he established himself in another part of the literary world.

From failed novelist to important critic

Shaw eventually found a more suitable outlet for his abilities through criticism and political writing. He became a music and theatre critic and developed a reputation for being outspoken, argumentative and unwilling to simply accept the conventions of the time. His work as a critic also helped him understand what he thought was wrong with contemporary theatre.

Theatre became especially important to Shaw because he believed it could do more than entertain an audience for an evening. His plays could discuss social problems, morality, class, relationships and politics while still using comedy. The Nobel Prize notes that Shaw's drama was marked by satire, provocation and allegory, and that he wrote more than 60 plays during his career.

His political interests developed alongside his writing. Shaw joined the Fabian Society in 1884, becoming one of its most prominent members and pamphleteers. The organisation supported gradual social and political reform rather than revolutionary violence, and Shaw's involvement with it became an important part of his public life. Many of his later plays carried some of these social and political ideas into the theatre.

Shaw used comedy to question society

Shaw's plays were often funny on the surface but argumentative underneath. He was interested in the subjects people preferred not to discuss too openly, including class, poverty, marriage, women's rights, morality and social inequality.

His early works included Widowers' Houses and Mrs. Warren's Profession, both of which attacked forms of social hypocrisy. He later wrote Arms and the Man, Major Barbara, Man and Superman and Pygmalion. The Nobel Prize describes Pygmalion as his best-known work, while also pointing to the combination of comedy and social criticism that became a feature of his writing.

That approach is important when looking again at the marriage quote. Shaw was not simply trying to produce a romantic observation that could be printed on a greeting card. He was interested in how social institutions worked and in the reasons people followed them. Marriage, therefore, could become another subject through which he examined human behaviour.

Man and Superman brought the idea into focus

Published in 1903, Man and Superman was one of Shaw's more ambitious works. It mixed comedy and philosophy and centred on the relationship between John Tanner and Ann Whitefield. Tanner is a politically minded intellectual who values his independence, while Ann is determined to pursue marriage in her own way. The relationship becomes a way for Shaw to explore ideas about love, freedom, attraction and human purpose.

The Maxims for Revolutionists section takes the discussion even further. The marriage section contains several deliberately provocative observations, including the famous line about temptation and opportunity. In the original text, the statement appears as a short maxim rather than as a long explanation, which is part of why it works so well. Shaw says something complicated in very few words and leaves the reader to argue with it.

Shaw's own marriage was also part of his story

Interestingly, Shaw himself was married. In 1898, he married Charlotte Payne-Townshend, an Irish suffragist, socialist, translator and patron of the arts. The couple later made Shaw's Corner in Hertfordshire their main home from 1906. The National Trust records that Charlotte shared many of Shaw's ideals and was involved in causes including women's rights.

Shaw's Corner remained his home for more than four decades. Today, the National Trust maintains the property and describes it as the country home where Shaw lived for 44 years. The house still contains objects connected with Shaw and Charlotte and offers a glimpse into the private surroundings of a writer who spent much of his public life questioning social conventions.