Life Does Not Cease To Be

This line is spoken by Sir Colenso Ridgeon in Act V of The Doctor's Dilemma (first staged 1906, published 1911). The play's final act caused controversy at the time for mingling a death scene with comedy — what we would now call black comedy — and this line is Shaw's defence of that tonal choice, placed in the mouth of the doctor himself. Shaw conceived the play after witnessing a real debate in bacteriologist Sir Almroth Wright's laboratory over which tuberculosis patient deserved the last available experimental treatment. The quote has since become one of Shaw's most celebrated, encapsulating his conviction that tragedy and comedy are permanently intertwined.