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The public for which masterpieces are intended is not of this earth.

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
Earth
Masterpieces
Masterpiece
Intended
Public

More quotes by Thornton Wilder

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But there comes a time in everybody's life when he must decide whether he'll live among human beings or nota fool among fools or a fool alone.
Thornton Wilder
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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.
Thornton Wilder
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[Whenever] you get near the human race, there's layers and layers of nonsense.
Thornton Wilder
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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.
Thornton Wilder
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I rose by sheer military ability to the rank of corporal.
Thornton Wilder
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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.
Thornton Wilder
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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.
Thornton Wilder
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The stuff of which masterpieces are made drifts about the world waiting to be clothed in words.
Thornton Wilder
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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.
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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On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.
Thornton Wilder
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Pride, avarice, and envy are in every home.
Thornton Wilder
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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.
Thornton Wilder
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Many plays - certainly mine - are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.
Thornton Wilder
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Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It's your combination sinners - your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards - who dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute.
Thornton Wilder
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When you're at war, you think about a better life when you're at peace you think about a more comfortable one.
Thornton Wilder
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Every writer is necessarily a critic - that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg - nine-tenths of him is under water.
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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One of the dangers of the American artist is that he finds himself almost exclusively thrown in with persons more or less in the arts. He lives among them, eats among them, quarrels with them, marries them.
Thornton Wilder
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The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose.
Thornton Wilder