Maggie, we're through with lies and liars in this house. Lock the door.
We're all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that human beings are experiments in life's journey, continually evolving and learning.
Tennessee Williams uses the metaphor of guinea pigs to highlight the idea that humans are constantly being tested and refined in the grand experiment of existence. Life is seen as a laboratory where individuals undergo trials and challenges, ultimately contributing to the ongoing evolution of humanity. This perspective encourages acceptance of our flaws and the understanding that growth and transformation are part of the human experience.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about personal development, one might say, 'As Tennessee Williams once stated, we are all guinea pigs in the laboratory of God, illustrating that we are all evolving beings.'
More from Tennessee Williams
All quotes →Time rushes towards us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.
Show me a person who hasn´t known any sorrow and I´ll show you a superficial.
Success and failure are equally disastrous.
The rest of my days I'm going to spend on the sea. And when I die, I'm going to die on the sea. You know what I shall die of? I shall die of eating an unwashed grape. One day out on the ocean I will die — with my hand in the hand of some nice-looking ship's doctor, a very young one with a small blond moustache and a big silver watch.
Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.
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What is more insane than to be partakers of the Sacraments of the Lord and not partakers of the words of the Lord? These men truly have to say: "In Thy Name we have eaten and drunk," and they will have to hear: "I do not know you!" (Luke 13:26-27). They eat and drink His Body and Blood in the Sacrament and do not recognize in the Gospel His members spread over the whole world, and for this reason they are not numbered among them at the Judgment.
A Soul Knowing: You are the sum total of the Body, Mind, and Soul, and each of these aspects of you has a purpose and a function, but only one has an agenda: the Soul.
Too many think lightly of sin, and therefore think lightly of the Savior. He who has stood before his God, convicted and condemned, with the rope about his neck, is the man to weep for joy when he is pardoned, to hate the evil which has been forgiven him, and to live to the honor of the Redeemer by whose blood he has been cleansed.
I no longer wield the power of the office for the government of the church, but in the service of prayer I remain, so to speak, within St. Peter's bounds. St. Benedict, whose name I bear as pope, shall be a great example in this for me. He showed us the way to a life which, active or passive, belongs wholly to the work of God.
I'm a capitalist. I believe in capitalism. But capitalism only works if you have safety nets to deal with people who are naturally left behind and brutalized by it.