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Our Town Quotes

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Our Town Quotes

“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.”

LifeTimeIgnoranceOur TownSimon Stimson
Book:Our Town
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“Borrowing money on what's called 'easy terms,' is a one-way ticket to the Poor House. If you think it ain't a Sucker Game, why is your Banker the richest man in your Town? Why is your Bank the biggest and finest building in your Town? Instead of passing Bills to make borrowing easy, if Congress had passed a Bill that no Person could borrow a cent of Money from any other person, they would have gone down in History as committing the greatest bit of Legislation in the World.”

IfsThinkingMenWorldWayPersonsGamesHouseEasyBitsTermPoorBusinessGoneBuildingTownsBillsCongressPassingPassingsOne WayCentsTicketsFinestLegislationBankersSuckerBorrowingOur TownBorrowing Money
Author:Will Rogers
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“In Middle America men are awakening. Like awkward and untrained boys we begin to turn toward maturity and with our awakening we hunger for song. But in our towns and fields there are few memory haunted places. Here we stand in roaring city streets, on steaming coal heaps, in the shadow of factories from which come only the grinding roar of machines. We do not sing but mutter in the darkness. Our lips are cracked with dust and with the heat of furnaces. We but mutter and feel our way toward the promise of song.”

MenWayFeelsAmericaSongTurnsMemoriesCitiesBoysDarknessStreetsMiddleFieldsPromiseShadowMachinesTownsLipsHungerAwakeningDustMaturityHeatFactoriesAwkwardCoalCrackedRoaringFurnacesOur TownCity StreetsMiddle America
Author:Sherwood Anderson
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“My prophecy is but half his journey yet, For yonder walls, that pertly front your town, Yon towers, whose wanton tops do buss the clouds, Must kiss their own feet.”

HalfJourneyFeetFrontsWallKissingTownsCloudsTowersProphecyWantonOur Town
Book:The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare: Timon of Athens. Troilus and Cressida. Cymbeline. King Lear. Vol. 8
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“Before the birth of the New Woman the country was not an intellectual desert, as she is apt to suppose. There were teachers of thehighest grade, and libraries, and countless circles in our towns and villages of scholarly, leisurely folk, who loved books, and music, and Nature, and lived much apart with them. The mad craze for money, which clutches at our souls to-day as la grippe does at our bodies, was hardly known then.”

DoeBookSoulCountryBodyCultureMoneyKnownTeacherBirthIntellectualTownsMadLibraryFolksCirclesDesertGradesVillageClutchScholarlyOur TownCrazeBooks And Music
Author:Rebecca Harding Davis
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“I was always moved by all of the music. As a young man, Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton, Count Basie and all these great musicians would come through our town of Memphis. There wasn't adequate hotels, so these musicians - the lady who ran the theater knew my mother, who had a large house, and many of them would stay with us. So that was another great blessing, so I'm always around these great geniuses, and to realize their humanity is such a touching thing.”

MenYoungMotherHumanityHouseRealizingGeniusBlessingMusicianTheaterTownsMovedRanYoung ManHotelTouchingAdequateGreat MusicDukesMemphisGreat MusicianOur TownHamptons
Author:Charles Lloyd
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“For He hath prepared for them a City! Hallelujah? He's got a City for you & me where you're not going to have any passport nor visa problems, they're not going to have to make sure you've got enough money to stay there awhile, it's YOUR town, your Hometown in Heaven, praise God? And they're all going to be your people! We're just going to be one nationality of one nation, ...we just haven't found the place yet, we haven't gotten there yet!”

PeopleEnoughProblemFoundHeavenNationsCitiesHavensTownsPraisePreparedHeavenlyNationalityHometownPassportsVisaPraise GodHallelujahOur Town
Author:David Berg
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“The most disgusting, appalling horror of our world that we live in, to me, is sex trafficking and the enslavement of men and women, boys and girls, in the sex industry. That is the most horrific, horrific thing that's happening and it's happening in all of our towns here in Los Angeles, in New York, in London, in Paris, all over the world, and I think that's really what has to be addressed.”

ThinkingMenWorldGirlSexBoysNew YorkIndustryHorrorHappeningsMen And WomenTownsLondonParisLos AngelesOur WorldDisgustingBoy And GirlHorrificEnslavementTraffickingOur Town
Author:Taylor Hackford
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“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.”

KnowsIdeasPlayAbleActionSpeakStepsAudienceMinesMajorsTownsOriginalsContributionPlotFormatOriginal IdeasWilderOur Town
Book:Gracie/Caeser Spec Ed
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“Basically, I have found that people who have tried to start communities out of good feelings or hippie-dippie abstract concepts of love - it doesn't work. But if you just concentrate on what is the identity of your town - its waterfalls, its battles, its notable mill strike or those things - you dig into what your town is from its rock formations to its history to its food. Then this thing called community happens all the time.”

PeopleIfsFeelingsHappensFoundCommunityRocksIdentityBattleConceptsTownsStrikesAbstractHippieFormationNotableMillsGood FeelingWaterfallsOur TownConcept Of Love
Author:Dar Williams
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“Let's say you want to do a job, and you want to be really successful. You want to rise really high in that career. But where you live, that job doesn't exist. Your town's too small. Or maybe the business is your town, but even if you reach the pinnacle there, because it's a small town, it's not nearly as high as you could go. If you're unwilling to move, well, that's all on you. That's a limitation you're placing on yourself. Now, that's fine if that's what makes you happy.”

IfsWantWellsJobsMovingCareersSuccessfulFineTownsLimitationSmall TownMake You HappyUnwillingPinnacleWhere You LiveOur Town
Author:Rush Limbaugh
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“For people who are coming out of an oral tradition, it is very exciting to get into reading and writing and it is quite interesting how frequently people want to write their own story. Sometimes it is straight history - this is how we came about, how our town was created, a lot of that kind of effort, as soon as literacy came. The first thing you wanted to do was to put something down about who you are or how you are related to you neighbors. Then the next stage would be the stories, the cultural part of the story: this is the kind of world our ancestors made or aspired to.”

PeopleWorldWantWritingFirstsKindMadeSometimesStoriesWould BeWantedReadingNextInterestingEffortStageTraditionExcitingTownsWho You AreNeighborRelatedComing OutAncestorLiteracyReading And WritingOur TownOral Tradition
Author:Chinua Achebe
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“We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being. -stage manager, in the play OUR TOWN”

PeopleKnowsWayYearsHumansHas BeensPlayEarthHouseNamesStarsHuman BeingsFiveStageThousandEternalLosingTownsBonesManagersThousand YearsOur TownStage ManagersAlways Losing
Book:Three Plays: Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Matchmaker
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“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”

KnowsYearsSelfFeelingsWantedMovingTimePassionExistenceMillionsAliveIgnoranceWasteMercyTownsCloudsWasting TimeBlindnessUp And DownSelf CenteredOur Town
Book:Three Plays: Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Matchmaker
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“[In 1951] we were also told that the Russians could be parachuting from planes over our town at any time. These were the same Russians that my uncles had fought alongside only a few years earlier. Now they had become monsters who were coming to slit our throats and incinerate us. It seemed peculiar. Living under a cloud of fear like this robs a child of his spirit. It's one thing to be afraid when someone's holding a shotgun on you, but it's another thing to be afraid of something that's just not quite real.”

YearsChildrenRealSpiritOne ThingTownsCloudsMonstersPlanesThroatPeculiarUnclesSlitsShotgunsOur Town
Book:Chronicles
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“Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corners... Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking... and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths...and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.”

WorldEarthRealizingSleepWonderfulWake UpHotDressesCornersCoffeeClockWakingBathsMamaPapaSunflowerOur TownGroverHot BathsClock Ticking
Book:Three Plays: Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Matchmaker
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“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.”

ThinkingMatterSeemsLyingStarsHoursFireJourneySkyHavensDown AndScholarStrainSixteenChalkOur TownEverybody Lies
Book:Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays & Writings on Theater
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“In our town there is a secret spot where you can still see the stars at night, believe it or not. It is the only spot like that left, unclouded by the dwindling skyscrapers rising nearby. It is a good place to go to walk and talk in whispers. Following the little hill that rises from the park to a small clearing which overlooks the statue of the armless general on his bronze steed, most of us later remember this spot as the first place we knew we might be in love.”

FirstsBelieveLittlesStillsMightRememberNightLeftStarsWalksSecretTownsFollowingSpotsHillsParksRisingStatuesGood PlaceClearingPlaces To GoBronzeSkyscraperOur Town
Book:The Boy Detective Fails
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