Louis Kronenberger (1904–80) was an American drama and literary critic. He also produced critical essays on American society and taught drama in prominent universities.
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Kronenberger attended the University of Cincinnati but did not graduate. He first worked in publishing in New York, joined the editorial staff of Fortune magazine in the mid-30s, and was drama critic of Time magazine 1938–61 and PM 1940–48. He taught drama in many Columbia and Harvard, and, in 1953, he became a professor of theater arts at Brandeis University.
Kronenberger published several prose and verse anthologies and edited several English classics as well as a series of plays. His popular works include his study of life in 18th-century England, Kings and Desperate Men (1942,) and his study of English stage comedy, Marlborough’s Duchess (1958.)
Kronenberger wrote the novels The Grand Manner (1929) and A Month of Sundays (1961.) He adapted French dramatist Jean Anouilh’s Mademoiselle Colombe (1954) for Broadway and edited the Best Plays series 1952–61.
Kronenberger’s autobiography is No Whippings, No Gold Watches; The Saga of a Writer and His Jobs (1970.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Louis Kronenberger
With intellectuals, moral thought is often less a tonic that quickens ethical action than a narcotic that deadens it.
—Louis Kronenberger
Topics: Morals
The moving van is a symbol of more than our restlessness, it is the most conclusive evidence possible of our progress.
—Louis Kronenberger
Topics: Progress
The trouble with our age is that it is all signpost and no destination.
—Louis Kronenberger
Topics: Aging, Age
Old age is an excellent time for outrage. My goal is to say or do at least one outrageous thing every week.
—Louis Kronenberger
Topics: Age, Aging, Old Age
Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it make us vain, in fact, of our modesty.
—Louis Kronenberger
A perfect conversation would run much less to brilliant sentences than to unfinished ones.
—Louis Kronenberger
Many people today don’t want honest answers insofar as honest means unpleasant or disturbing. They want a soft answer that turneth away anxiety.
—Louis Kronenberger
Topics: Self-Knowledge, Honesty, Awareness
Highly educated bores are by far the worst; they know so much, in such fiendish detail, to be boring about.
—Louis Kronenberger
Topics: Boredom
In art there are tears that lie too deep for thought.
—Louis Kronenberger
Topics: Artists, Art
In the history of mankind, fanaticism has caused more harm than vice.
—Louis Kronenberger
Topics: Fanaticism
One of the misfortunes of our time is, that in getting rid of false shame, we have killed off so much real shame as well.
—Louis Kronenberger
Ours must be the first age whose great goal, on a nonmaterial plane, is not fulfillment but adjustment.
—Louis Kronenberger
Topics: Acceptance
The trouble with us in America isn’t that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy.
—Louis Kronenberger
Topics: Advertising
Individualism is rather like innocence; there must be something unconscious about it.
—Louis Kronenberger
There seems to be a great misunderstanding on the part of a great many people to the effect that when you cease to believe you may cease to behave.
—Louis Kronenberger
Topics: Belief
One must never judge the writer by the man; but one may fairly judge the man by the writer.
—Louis Kronenberger
Topics: Writing
The thrust of ambition is, and always has been, great, but among the bright-eyed it had once a more adventurous and individualistic air, a much more bracing rivalry.
—Louis Kronenberger
Topics: Ambition
Privacy was in sufficient danger before TV appeared, and TV has given it its death blow.
—Louis Kronenberger
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