Thornton Wilder
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilderwas an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes—for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for the two plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth — and a U.S. National Book Award for the novel The Eighth Day...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth17 April 1897
CityMadison, WI
CountryUnited States of America
cloud existence feelings ignorance mercy million move passion spend time waste
Yes. Now you know. Now you know. That's what it was to be alive, to move about in a cloud of ignorance, to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those-- of those about you, to spend and waste time as if you had a million years, to be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion or another. Now you know, that's the 'happy' existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness.
employ fitted learned moral supremely theatre truth
The theatre is supremely fitted to say: ''Behold! These things are.'' Yet most dramatists employ it to say: ''This moral truth can be learned from beholding this action.''
impulses land living loved memory necessary ourselves return shall
And we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead,
human layers near race wherever
Wherever you come near the human race there's layers and layers of nonsense.
time moving passion
That’s what it was like to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those...of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. Now you know- that’s the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness. -Simon Stimson, OUR TOWN
time moving eye
It is only in appearance that time is a river. It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves.
realize-life our-town realizing
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?
unhappy-childhood atheism essentials
I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts.
time fool humans
But there comes a time in everybody's life when he must decide whether he'll live among human beings or nota fool among fools or a fool alone.
public-good
Leadership is for those who love the public good and are endowed and trained to administer it.
friday july bridges
On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.
loyalty dog children
She had never realized any love save love as passion. Such love, though it expends itself in generosity and thoughtfulness, though it give birth to visions and to great poetry, remains among the sharpest expressions of self-interest. Not until it has passed though a long servitude, though its own self-hatred, though mockery, though great doubts, can it take its place among the loyalties. Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.
love-life needs
you have to love life to have life, and you need to have life to love life
integrity liars two
Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It's your combination sinners - your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards - who dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute.