The comic spirit is given to us in order that we may analyze, weigh, and clarify things in us which nettle us, or which we are outgrowing, or trying to reshape
Thornton WilderRead
There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Love serves as a connection between life and death, giving meaning to existence.
The quote by Thornton Wilder emphasizes the idea that love is the essential bridge that connects the experiences of living and the inevitability of death. It suggests that love is not only a powerful emotion but also the fundamental aspect that gives our lives significance, providing comfort and continuity even in the face of mortality.
Themes
LoveLifeDeathMeaningConnection
In practice
Example use cases
In a eulogy, one could use this quote to highlight the enduring power of love between people.
More from Thornton Wilder
All quotes →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.
Thornton WilderRead
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.
Thornton WilderRead
When you're safe at home you wish you were having an adventure; when you're having an adventure you wish you were safe at home.
Thornton WilderRead
Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was nursed by the closest attention to colloquial speech.
Thornton WilderRead
I want you to try and remember what it was like to have been very young. And particularly the days when you were first in love; when you were like a person sleepwalking, and you didn’t quite see the street you were in, and didn’t quite hear everything that was said to you. You’re just a little bit crazy. Will you remember that, please?
Thornton WilderRead
Similar quotes
I must be willing to give whatever it takes to do good to others. This requires that I be willing to give until it hurts. Otherwise, there is no true love in me, and I bring injustice, not peace, to those around me.
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I think true love is not only true personal love but totality of love, universal love - to be in love with everything manifest and everything unmanifest.
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I have loved you woman as surely as I have named you rust and sand and nylon.
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Romance is one of the sacred temples that dot the landscape of life.
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Of all the nonsense written about love, none is more absurd than the notion that ideal love is selfless. To love is to see myself in you and to wish to celebrate myself with you. What I love is the embodiment of my values in another person. Love is an act of self-assertion, self-expression and a celebration of being alive.
Nathaniel BrandenRead
I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.
Leo TolstoyRead