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[Whenever] you get near the human race, there's layers and layers of nonsense.

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
Humans
Layers
Nonsense
Near
Whenever
Race
Human

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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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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 rose by sheer military ability to the rank of corporal.
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We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
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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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Leadership is for those who love the public good and are endowed and trained to administer it.
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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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Look at that moon. Potato weather for sure.
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Throughout the hours of the night, though there had been few to hear it, the whole sky had been loud with the singing of these constellations.
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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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Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.
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The public for which masterpieces are intended is not of this earth.
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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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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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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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I think I write in order to discover on my shelf a new book that I would enjoy reading, or to see a new play that would engross me.
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Heaven's my destination.
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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 have inherited this burden of superstition and nonsense. I govern innumerable men but must acknowledge that I am governed by birds and thunderclaps
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I hold we cannot be said to be aware of our minds save under responsibility.
Thornton Wilder