46 quotes
Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow.
The Matchmaker (1954)
I hold that we cannot be said to be aware of our minds save under responsibility.
The Ides of March (1948)
Wherever you come near the human race there's layers and layers of nonsense.
Our Town (1938)
Love is an energy which exists of itself. It is its own value.
Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. ...Do human beings ever realize life while they live it? — Every, every minute?
Our Town (1938)
We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
The Woman of Andros (1930)
There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927)
Even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927)
Whenever you come near the human race, there’s layers and layers of nonsense.
Our Town (1938)
Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she's a householder.
The Matchmaker (1954)
I've never forgotten for long at a time that living is struggle. I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for — whether it's a field, or a home, or a country.
The Skin of Our Teeth (1942)
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.
The Matchmaker (1954)
Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.
The most valuable thing I inherited was a temperament that does not revolt against Necessity and that is constantly renewed in Hope.
I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.
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.
The Eighth Day (1967)
I am not interested in the ephemeral — such subjects as the adulteries of dentists. I am interested in those things that repeat and repeat and repeat in the lives of the millions.
Many plays — certainly mine — are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.
People are meant to go through life two by two. 'Tain't natural to be lonesome.
Our Town (1938)
A man looks pretty small at a wedding, George. All those good women standing shoulder to shoulder, making sure that the knot's tied in a mighty public way.
Our Town (1938)