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Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.

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
Orchestration
Platitudes
Literature

More quotes by 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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There's nothing like mixing with women to bring out all the foolishness in a man of sense.
Thornton Wilder
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Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipients of confidences.
Thornton Wilder
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We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
Thornton Wilder
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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.
Thornton Wilder
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Heaven's my destination.
Thornton Wilder
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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.
Thornton Wilder
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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?
Thornton Wilder
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Favors cease to be favors when there are conditions attached to 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
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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.
Thornton Wilder
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The public for which masterpieces are intended is not of this earth.
Thornton Wilder
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you have to love life to have life, and you need to have life to love life
Thornton Wilder
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Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.
Thornton Wilder
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Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.
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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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.
Thornton Wilder
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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.
Thornton Wilder
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A play visibly represents pure existing.
Thornton Wilder
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Money is like manure it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow.
Thornton Wilder