Our Town Quotes

“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?”

“And let that be a lesson to you, George, never to ask advice on personal matters.”

“People are meant to go through life two by two. ’Tain’t natural to be lonesome.”

“I think that once you’ve found a person that you’re very fond of . . . I mean a person who’s fond of you, too, and likes you enough to be interested in your character. . . . Well, I think that’s just as important as college is, and even more so.”

“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.”

“They’ll have a lot of troubles, I suppose, but that’s none of our business. Everybody has a right to their own troubles.”

“It’s like what one of those Middle West poets said: You’ve got to love life to have life, and you’ve got to have life to love life…It’s what they call a vicious circle.”

“You know how it is: you’re twenty-one or twenty-two and you make some decisions; then whisssh! you’re seventy: you’ve been a lawyer for fifty years, and that white-haired lady at your side has eaten over fifty thousand meals with you.”

“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?”

“I’m celebrating because I’ve got a friend who tells me all the things that ought to be told me.”

“And, like you say, being gone all the time…in other places and meeting other people…Gosh, if anything like that can happen I don’t want to go away. I guess new people aren’t any better than old ones. I’ll bet they almost never are, Emily…I feel that you’re as good a friend as I’ve got. I don’t need to go and meet the people in other towns.”

“It was your mother chopping wood. There you see your mother – getting up early; cooking meals all day long; washing and ironing; – and still she has to go out in the back yard and chop wood. I suppose she just got tired of asking you. She just gave up and decided it was easier to do it herself. And you eat her meals, and put on the clothes she keeps nice for you, and you run off and play baseball . . .”

“Men aren’t naturally good; but girls are.”

“No…I should have listened to you. That’s all human beings are! Just blind people.”

“Every child born into the world is nature’s attempt to make a perfect human being.”

“Oh, Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me.”

“Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don’t talk in English and don’t even want to.”

“Almost everybody in the world gets married,—you know what I mean? In our town there aren’t hardly any exceptions. Most everybody in the world climbs into their graves married.”

“Ma, I don’t want to grow old. Why’s everybody pushing me so?”

“I was the scaredest young fella in the State of New Hampshire. I thought I’d make a mistake for sure. And when I saw you comin’ down that aisle I thought you were the prettiest girl I’d ever seen, but the only trouble was that I’d never seen you before. There I was in the Congregation Church marryin’ a total stranger.”