Thornton Wilder Our Town Quotes & Sayings

It is dreadful the way all the comfortable, happy people stay off to themselves. — Jane Addams

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 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. — Thornton Wilder

Too often we react emotionally, get despondent, and lose our perspective. All that does is turn bad things into really bad things. Unhelpful perceptions can invade our minds
that sacred place of reason, action and will
and throw off our compasses. — Ryan Holiday

There are the stars
doing their old, old crisscross journeys in the sky. Scholars haven't settled the matter yet, but they seem to think there are no living beings out there. Just chalk ... or fire. Only this one is straining away, straining away all the time to make something of itself. Strain's so bad that every sixteen hours everybody lies down and gets a rest. — Thornton Wilder

What I'm thinking is: here I am, lying under a haystack ... The tiny little place I occupy is so small in relation to the rest of space where I am not and where it's none of my business; and the amount of time which I'll succeed in living is so insignificant by comparison with the eternity where I haven't been and never will be ... And yet in this atom, in this mathematical point, the blood circulates, the brain works and even desires something as well .. What sheer ugliness! What sheer nonsense! — Ivan Turgenev

Everybody has a right to their own troubles. — Thornton Wilder

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 — Thornton Wilder

In 1628, French pirates and marauding, escaped slaves plundered Santiago and burned Havana to the ground. Even the Dutch, led by Piet Heyn , sacked the Spanish fleet lying at anchor in Havana harbor. page 83, "The Exciting Story of Cuba — Hank Bracker

Follow the spiders," said Ron weakly, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "I'll never forgive Hagrid. We're lucky to be alive." "I bet he thought Aragog wouldn't hurt friends of his," said Harry. "That's exactly Hagrid's problem!" said Ron, thumping the wall of the cabin. "He always thinks monsters aren't as bad as they're made out, and look where it's got him! A cell in Azkaban! — J.K. Rowling

I remember how people would often come to see my master Jamyang Khyentse simply to ask for his guidance for the moment of death. He was so loved and revered throughout Tibet, especially in the eastern province of Kham, that some would travel for months on end to meet him and get his blessing just once before they died. All my masters would give this as their advice, for this is the essence of what is needed as you come to die: "Be free of attachment and aversion. Keep your mind pure. And unite your mind with Buddha." — Sogyal Rinpoche

What Mr. Kaufman and his team are after is less a portrait of any one person than one of the ethos of a place. In the deliberate, simple staging ... in which eight radiantly clean-scrubbed performers embody 60 different people against a bare-bones set, 'Laramie' often brings to mind 'Our Town,' the beloved Thornton Wilder study of life, love and death in parochial New Hampshire. — Ben Brantley

So - people a thousand years from now ... This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying. — Thornton Wilder

My major contribution to the format was to suggest that I be able to step out of the plot and speak directly to the audience, and then be able to go right back into the action. That was an original idea of mine; I know it was because I originally stole it from Thornton Wilder's play Our Town. — George Burns

You've got to love life to have life, and you've got to have life to love life. — Thornton Wilder

all the sacristies in town: they trimmed all the cloister hedges; they polished every possible crucifix; they — Thornton Wilder

I would have done anything for an old fashioned phone right about now. Instead I have to suffice with pushing the End Call button really hard — Melissa Pearl

I was able to use credit default swaps to protect not only my investments but the hundreds of jobs that exist because of my investment. I understand the dangers of credit default swaps and the benefits of credit default swaps. — Jeff Greene

After I outlined 'Catering to Nobody,' I went and worked for a caterer. And the other thing I had to do was to talk to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department about how they investigated a crime. — Diane Mott Davidson