The line descends from a parodic testimonial the humorist Artemus Ward planted in advertising for his 1863 lecture tour and signed “O. Abe” — the suggestive name is why Lincoln, not Shaw, usually gets the credit. Shaw wrote his own variant in Man and Superman (1903), Act II, where the chauffeur Straker calls Oxford a very nice sort of place for people that like that sort of place. That is a different sentence, and the popular wording is pinned to no work of Shaw's.
“People Who Like This Sort of Thing Will Find This the Sort of Thing They Like” People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like. — not George Bernard Shaw. The line descends from a spoof testimonial signed 'O. Abe' that the humorist Artemus Ward planted in advertising for his lectures, first printed in the Daily Eastern Argus (Portland, Maine) on 23 October 1863; the signature is why Abraham Lincoln is usually credited. Shaw wrote a different variant in Man and Superman (1903), Act II. Via Quotle.info
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to George Bernard Shaw. Use the credit shown above instead.
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In context
Evoking the world of Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne) — American humorist, editor & comic lecturer. Theme: "People Who Like This Sort of Thing Will Find This the Sort of Thing They Like". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "People Who Like This Sort of Thing Will Find This the Sort of Thing They Like". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
Where it actually starts
Originating text
Artemus Ward's spoof testimonial signed “O. Abe”
First printed
Daily Eastern Argus (Portland, Maine), 23 October 1863, p. 4
Also printed
“Artemus Ward Advertises,” American Traveller (Boston), 31 October 1863, p. 1
Shaw's actual line
Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy, Act II (1903)
Artemas Ward among other puffs of his lectures has the following from “Old Abe:” — Dear Sir–I have never heard any of your lectures, but from what I can learn I should say that for people who like the kind of lectures you deliver, they are just the kind of lectures such people like. Yours, respectably, O. Abe.
1863 · the joke that started it
As transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗ from the Daily Eastern Argus of 23 October 1863, where the paper misspelled Ward's pen name as “Artemas.” The signature was the whole joke: the letter openly admits the writer never heard a word of the lectures.
How a ticket advertisement became a Lincoln anecdote
October 1863 — Charles Farrar Browne, performing as Artemus Ward, salts his lecture advertising with parodic testimonials from invented supporters. One of them is signed “O. Abe.” Quote Investigator ↗ dates the earliest printing to the Daily Eastern Argus of 23 October 1863.
1874–1888 — newspapers retell it as a true Lincoln story and the wording drifts with each telling: a lecture read aloud in 1874, a “long manuscript” in 1879, a book on metaphysics in 1888. Ward's name falls out along the way, so readers never learn a comedian wrote it. Chronology at Quote Investigator ↗
1903 — Shaw writes his own member of the family, and it is not this sentence. In Man and Superman, Act II, Straker tells Tanner that Oxford is a very nice sort of place, he should think, for people that like that sort of place. Full text at Project Gutenberg ↗
1939 — Carl Sandburg prints a Lincoln version in Abraham Lincoln: The War Years but concedes it may have been attributed to him “with slight changes” out of Ward's fabricated endorsement. Wikiquote now files the line under Lincoln's posthumous attributions and points back to Ward. Wikiquote ↗
No first publication can be tied to this exact wording: it is an anonymous polish of a joke that mutated through decades of newspaper retellings, so no rights status can honestly be asserted for it. The documented ancestors are a different matter — Ward's 1863 newspaper testimonial and Shaw's 1903 Man and Superman were both published long before 1931 and are in the public domain in the United States.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Four famous names, one advertising gag
The sentence in circulation belongs to nobody in particular — it is a folk-polished descendant of a joke written to sell lecture tickets. Four well-known figures have collected credit for it, and only one of them wrote anything close.
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the whole lineAbraham Lincoln the main claimant
Ward signed his invented testimonial “O. Abe,” and readers took the name literally. Newspapers then built anecdotes around it — a lecture in 1874, a long manuscript in 1879, a book on metaphysics in 1888 — each retelling reshaping the words. Carl Sandburg repeated a version in 1939 while conceding Ward was the likely source, and Wikiquote lists the line among Lincoln's posthumous attributions. Quote Investigator ↗ concludes Lincoln probably never used the expression. Quote sites still print the popular wording under his name with no source at all, tagged only “in review of a book.”
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the exact wordingGeorge Bernard Shaw different words
Shaw wrote a member of this family, but not this sentence. In Man and Superman (1903), Act II, the chauffeur Straker answers Tanner: “Very nice sort of place, Oxford, I should think, for people that like that sort of place.” That is the whole of Shaw's contribution, and it is about Oxford, not about a book. Read it at Project Gutenberg ↗. No work of Shaw's contains the popular wording.
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a 1911 variantMax Beerbohm his own version
In Zuleika Dobson (1911) Beerbohm handed the line to his comic incarnation of Clio, muse of history: “For people who like that kind of thing, that is the kind of thing they like.” The classical setting caused some temporal confusion about how old the saying really was. Documented by Quote Investigator ↗.
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a 1961 variantMuriel Spark her own version
Miss Jean Brodie dismisses the Brownies with “For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like,” in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, published in The New Yorker on 14 October 1961. Spark, like Beerbohm and Shaw, was reworking a saying already in wide circulation. Documented by Quote Investigator ↗.
✓“Artemus Ward should be credited with the comical letter of ‘O. Abe’ from 1863” — Quote Investigator ↗, which finds every later version derived directly or indirectly from Ward, and Lincoln's own use of the expression unlikely.
Context
A joke about praise that praises nothing
The gag works because it is airtight and empty. It commits to nothing, offends nobody, and says only that a thing is itself — which is exactly why it has survived as the perfect insult disguised as a compliment. Ward built it as a parody of the patent-medicine testimonial: the same advertisement carried a letter from one “Amos Pilkins” whose wife recovered from the pipsywipsy after attending a lecture, and who offers to write another certificate twice as long for another five dollars.
Attaching it to Lincoln was never a hoax so much as an accident of signature. “O. Abe” was a wink, not a forgery; but once the joke was reprinted across the country, the wink was lost and a President's name was left standing in it. Every later teller then improved the phrasing a little, which is how a line nobody can source ended up sounding more quotable than anything actually written.
The letter itself admits the writer never heard a single one of the lectures. That was the joke.
Why Shaw's name is on it at all
Shaw's involvement is the mildest kind of guilt by association. By 1903 the saying was already decades old and thoroughly in the air; Straker's Oxford put-down is Shaw doing his own turn on a familiar shape, in a play about class and education where the joke lands on a university rather than on a manuscript.
Ralph Keyes discussed the quotation in The Quote Verifier and supplied the Shaw and Beerbohm citations that Quote Investigator credits in its acknowledgement. Shaw is one of the handful of names Keyes calls “flypaper figures” — wits whose reputations attract unowned lines — alongside Lincoln, Twain, Churchill and Franklin.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1834–1867 · American humorist, editor & comic lecturer
Charles Farrar Browne of Waterford, Maine wrote and performed as Artemus Ward, a barely literate travelling showman whose deadpan delivery made him one of America's first great comic lecturers. He edited the original Vanity Fair until it folded in 1863, mentored the young Mark Twain in Nevada, and counted Abraham Lincoln among his readers — the President read his sketch “Outrage in Utiky” to the Cabinet before presenting the Emancipation Proclamation. He died in 1867, having left behind a throwaway advertising gag that outlived almost everything he wrote on purpose.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest documented instance
Earliest documented instance per Quote Investigator: Artemus Ward's spoof testimonial signed “O. Abe,” Daily Eastern Argus (Portland, ME), October 23, 1863, 4; also printed as “Artemus Ward Advertises,” American Traveller (Boston), October 31, 1863, 1. Chronology: Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: People Who Like This Sort of Thing Will Find This the Sort of Thing They Like,” September 9, 2015. Bernard Shaw's own variant: Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy (Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co., 1903), Act II, 50.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘People Who Like This Sort of Thing Will Find This the Sort of Thing They Like’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/people-who-like-this-sort-of-thing-will-find-this-the-sort/