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He regarded love as a sort of cruel malady through which the elect are required to pass in their late youth and from which they emerge, pale and wrung, but ready for the business of living.

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
Ready
Emerge
Sort
Regarded
Pale
Living
Cruel
Business
Required
Love
Pass
Wrung
Youth
Malady
Late
Elect

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What is essential does not die but clarifies.
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Heaven's my destination.
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Imprisonment of the body is bitter imprisonment of the mind is worse
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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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There is no drunkenness equal to that of remembering whispered words in the night.
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Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipients of confidences.
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If a man has no vices, he is in great danger of making vices about his virtues, and there's a spectacle.
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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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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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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.
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[Whenever] you get near the human race, there's layers and layers of nonsense.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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