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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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Imprisonment of the body is bitter imprisonment of the mind is worse
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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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I rose by sheer military ability to the rank of corporal.
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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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There is no drunkenness equal to that of remembering whispered words in the night.
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There's nothing like mixing with women to bring out all the foolishness in a man of sense.
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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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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 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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A play visibly represents pure existing.
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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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Favors cease to be favors when there are conditions attached to them.
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Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipients of confidences.
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The stuff of which masterpieces are made drifts about the world waiting to be clothed in words.
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A purpose is the eternal condition of success.
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The difference between a little money and no money at all is enormous-and can shatter the world. And the difference between a little money and an enormous amount of money is very slight-and that, also, can shatter the world.
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For what human ill does dawn not seem to be alternative?
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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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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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Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she's a householder.
Thornton Wilder