# Quote — George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah

> Love is a simple thing and a deep thing: it is an act of life and not an illusion. Art is an illusion.

- Author: [George Bernard Shaw](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw.md)
- Book: [Back to Methuselah](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw/back-to-methuselah.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Back_to_Methuselah#Quotes) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw/back-to-methuselah/love-is-a-simple

## More from this book

> I had patience with them for many ages: they tried me very sorely. They did terrible things: they embraced death, and said that eternal life was a fable. I stood amazed at the malice and destructiveness of the things I had made...

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw/back-to-methuselah/i-had-patience.md)

> They have redeemed themselves from their vileness, and turned away from their sins. Best of all, they are still not satisfied: the impulse I gave them in that day when I sundered myself in twain and launched Man and Woman on the earth still urges them: after passing a million goals they press on to the goal of redemption from the flesh, to the vortex freed from matter, to the whirlpool in pure intelligence that, when the world began, was a whirlpool in pure force.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw/back-to-methuselah/they-have-redeemed.md)

> The body was the slave of the vortex; but the slave has become the master; and we must free ourselves from that tyranny. It is this stuff [indicating her body], this flesh and blood and bone and all the rest of it, that is intolerable. Even prehistoric man dreamed of what he called an astral body, and asked who would deliver him from the body of this death.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-bernard-shaw/back-to-methuselah/the-body-was.md)