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We do not choose the day of our birth nor may we choose the day of our death, yet choice is the sovereign faculty of the mind.

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
Choices
Death
May
Mind
Sovereign
Faculty
Choice
Birth
Choose

More quotes by Thornton Wilder

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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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The planting of trees is the least self-centered of all that we can do. It is a purer act of faith than the procreation of children.
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I hold we cannot be said to be aware of our minds save under responsibility.
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The test of an adventure is that when you're in the middle of it, you say to yourself Oh now I've got myself into an awful mess I wish I were sitting quietly at home. And the sign that something's wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventure.
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I not only bow to the inevitable I am fortified by it.
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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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The best part of married life is the fights. The rest is merely so-so.
Thornton Wilder
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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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Enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate.
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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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Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipients of confidences.
Thornton Wilder
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Winning children (who appear so guileless) are children who have discovered how effective charm and modesty and a delicately calculated spontaneity are in winning what they want.
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Heaven's my destination.
Thornton Wilder
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I was an old man when I was 12 and now I am an old man, AND IT'S SPLENDID!
Thornton Wilder
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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.
Thornton Wilder
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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.
Thornton Wilder
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Nature reserves the right to inflict upon her children the most terrifying jests.
Thornton Wilder
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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.
Thornton Wilder
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The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way.
Thornton Wilder
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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.
Thornton Wilder