the bridge of san luis rey by thornton wilder

― Thornton Wilder, quote from The Bridge of San Luis Rey She longed to free herself from this ignoble bond but the passion was too fierce to cope with.” And when on the balcony her thoughts reached this turn, her mouth would contract with shame for she knew that she too sinned and that though her love for her daughter was vast enough to include all the colors of love, it was not without a shade of tyranny: she loved her daughter not for her daughter's sake, but for her own. These were the sons and daughters of Adam from Cathay to Peru. She saw that the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires. All families lived in a wasteful atmosphere of custom and kissed one another with secret indifference. She secretly refused to believe that anyone (herself excepted) loved anyone. Next she lost her belief in the sincerity of those about her. Her religious beliefs went first, for all she could ask of a god, or of immortality, was the gift of a place where daughters love their mothers the other attributes of Heaven you could have for a song. “The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs.

The bridge of san luis rey by thornton wilder