"Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?"
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Quote collection
Thornton Wilder quotes (page 4 of 7)
139 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"true influence over another comes not from a moments eloquence nor from any happily chosen word, but from the accumulation of a lifetime's thoughts stored up in the eyes...the secret smile in the eyes of a friend"
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"The best thing about animals is they don't talk much."
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"the whole purport of literature...is the notation of the heart. Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world."
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"[Camila] was quite incapable of establishing any harmony between the claims of her art, of her appetites, or her dreams, and of her crowded daily routine. Each of these was a world in itself."
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"I've never forgotten for long at a time that living is struggle. I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for - whether it's a field, or a home, or a country."
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"The unencumbered stage encourages the truth operative in everyone. The less seen, the more heard. The eye is the enemy of the ear in real drama."
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"Characterization in a play is like a blank check which the dramatist accords to the actor for him to fill in."
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"Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she's a householder."
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"Pride, avarice, and envy are in every home."
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"That's the advantage of having lived sixty-five years. You don't feel the need to be impatient any longer."
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"Nature reserves the right to inflict upon her children the most terrifying jests."
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"Literature is the orchestration of platitudes."
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"A good writer preserves an air of freedom in his prose, so that the reader won't know how a story will end - even if he's reading a history book."
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"A purpose is the eternal condition of success."
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"There is one regard in which bullies show real perception when compared with their victims; it is their silent good-natured pleasure of the moment."
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"The comic spirit is given to us in order that we may analyze, weigh, and clarify things in us which nettle us, or which we are outgrowing, or trying to reshape"
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"Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipients of confidences."
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"The condition of leadership adds new degrees of solitariness to the basic solitude of mankind. Every order that we issue increases the extent to which we are alone, and every show of deference which is extended to us separates us from our fellows."
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"Leadership is for those who love the public good and are endowed and trained to administer it."
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