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181 " Whom were these two seeking to please? Not the audiences of Lima. They had long since been satisfied. We come from a world where we have known incredible standards of excellence, and we dimly remember beauties which we have not seized again; and we go back to that world. Uncle Pio and Camila Perichole were tormenting themselves in an effort to establish in Peru the standards of the theatres in some Heaven whither Calderon had preceded them. The public for which masterpieces are intended is not on this earth. "
― Thornton Wilder , The Bridge of San Luis Rey
182 " Most rájött arra a titokra, melyből sohase gyógyulunk meg, hogy még a legtökéletesebb szerelemben is egyikünk kevésbé mélyen szeret, mint másikunk. Mindketten egyformán jók lehetünk, egyformán tehetségesek és szépek is; de sohase lehet két ember, aki egyformán szereti egymást. "
183 " She had never brought courage to either life or love. Her eyes ransacked her heart. She thought of the amulets and of her beads, her drunkenness... she thought of her daughter. She remembered the long relationship, crowded with the wreckage of exhumed conversations, of fancied slights, of inopportune confidences, of charges of neglect and exclusion (but she must have been mad that day; she remembered beating on the table). "But it's not my fault," she cried. "It's not my fault that I was so. It was circumstance. It was the way I was brought up. Tomorrow I begin a new life. Wait and see, oh my child. "
184 " There I was in the Congregational Church marryin’ a total stranger. "
― Thornton Wilder , Three Plays: Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Matchmaker
185 " perfectly awful things. Farces,—that’s what they are! "
186 " She talked that night of all those out in the dark (she was thinking of Esteban alone, she was thinking of Pepita alone) who had no one to turn to, for whom the world perhaps was more than difficult, without meaning. "
― Thornton Wilder
187 " Well, I heard a lot of the hours struck "
188 " To survive, a story must arouse wonder. "
189 " series of infatuations for admired writers. "
190 " There’s a lot of common sense in some superstitions, George. "
191 " Braque and James Joyce, they are the incomprehensibles whom anybody can understand "
192 " our town we like to know the facts about everybody. "
193 " The management had prudently replaced the chairs with benches and packing cases. For men without women a cave is sufficient. "
― Thornton Wilder , The Eighth Day
194 " There is no adventure in life equal to that of being, and asserting, one’s self. "
195 " Yes. I declare—easy as kittens. "
196 " Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute? "
197 " never knew who to send a letter to with the Thornton Wilder stamp. "
198 " But if our minds can make such Gods and if from the Gods we have made there flows such power, which is no more than a power resident within us, why cannot we employ that power directly? "
― Thornton Wilder , The Ides of March
199 " There are times when it requires a high courage to speak the banal. "
200 " of ignorance; "