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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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Thornton Wilder
Age: 78 †
Born: 1897
Born: April 17
Died: 1975
Died: December 7
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Madison
Wisconsin
Thornton Niven Wilder
Book
Play
Shelf
Writing
Shelves
Would
Discover
Think
Reading
Thinking
Enjoy
Write
Order

More quotes by 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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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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A purpose is the eternal condition of success.
Thornton Wilder
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For what human ill does dawn not seem to be alternative?
Thornton Wilder
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Favors cease to be favors when there are conditions attached to them.
Thornton Wilder
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We live in what is, but we find a thousand ways not to face it. Great theater strengthens our faculty to face it.
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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Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
Thornton Wilder
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Where there is an unknowable, there is a promise.
Thornton Wilder
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Heaven's my destination.
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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A man looks pretty small at a wedding, George. All those good women standing shoulder to shoulder, making sure that the knot's tied in a mighty public way.
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
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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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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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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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[Whenever] you get near the human race, there's layers and layers of nonsense.
Thornton Wilder
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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.
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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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