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Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.

Thornton Wilder

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Thornton Wilder
Age: 78 †
Born: 1897
Born: April 17
Died: 1975
Died: December 7
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Madison
Wisconsin
Thornton Niven Wilder
World
Nine
People
Fool
Danger
Percent
Contagion
Rest
Ninety
Society
Insanity
Funny
Fools
Great
Insane

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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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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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For what human ill does dawn not seem to be alternative?
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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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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 man looks pretty small at a wedding, George. All those good women standing shoulder to shoulder, making sure that the knot's tied in a mighty public way.
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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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Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she's a householder.
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Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
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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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A purpose is the eternal condition of success.
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Art is not only the desire to tell one's secret it is the desire to tell it and hide it at the same time.
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Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other. There may be two equally good, equally gifted, equally beautiful, but theremay never be two that love one another equally well.
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The public for which masterpieces are intended is not of this earth.
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Doctors are mostly impostors. The older a doctor is and the more venerated he is, the more he must pretend to know everything. Of course, they grow worse with time. Always look for a doctor who is hated by the best doctors. Always seek out a bright young doctor before he comes down with nonsense.
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I was an old man when I was 12 and now I am an old man, AND IT'S SPLENDID!
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Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don't talk in English and don't even want to.
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I am my own judge of what truths I shall tell. The truth can do just as much harm as a lie.
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How do you know what the world is like? Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know if you rip the fronts off houses you'd find swine? The world's a hell. What does it matter what happens in it?
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There is nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.
Thornton Wilder