"EMILY: "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?" STAGE MANAGER: "No. Saints and poets maybe...they do some."
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Quote collection
Thornton Wilder quotes (page 2 of 7)
139 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Some say that we shall never know, and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer's day, and some say, to the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God."
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"The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose."
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"Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day."
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"Life is a fatal adventure. It can only have one end. So why not make it as far-ranging and free as possible."
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"That’s what it was like to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those...of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. Now you know- that’s the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness. -Simon Stimson, OUR TOWN"
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"Love is an energy which exists of itself. It is its own value."
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"There is no drunkenness equal to that of remembering whispered words in the night."
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"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."
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"I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts."
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"Faith is a never-ending pool of clarity, reaching far beyond the margins of consciousness. We all know more than we know we know."
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"Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday."
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"A sense of humor judges one's actions and the actions of others from a wider reference. It pardons shortcomings, it consoles failure."
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"A dramatist is one who believes that the pure event, an action involving human beings, is more arresting than any comment that can be made upon it."
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"Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow."
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"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."
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"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?"
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"It is very necessary to have markers of beauty left in a world seemingly bent on making the most evil ugliness."
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"When God loves a creature he wants the creature to know the highest happiness and the deepest misery ... He wants him to know all that being alive can bring. That is his best gift.... There is no happiness save in understanding the whole."
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"An incinerator is a writer's best friend."
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