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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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Thornton Wilder
Age: 78 †
Born: 1897
Born: April 17
Died: 1975
Died: December 7
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Madison
Wisconsin
Thornton Niven Wilder
Desire
Tell
Art
Time
Hide
Secret

More quotes by Thornton Wilder

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Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.
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Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.
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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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Every good thing in the world stands on the razor-edge of danger.
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There is nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.
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Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
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you have to love life to have life, and you need to have life to love life
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Heaven's my destination.
Thornton Wilder
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Nature reserves the right to inflict upon her children the most terrifying jests.
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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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.
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The best part of married life is the fights. The rest is merely so-so.
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 hold we cannot be said to be aware of our minds save under responsibility.
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 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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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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Leadership is for those who love the public good and are endowed and trained to administer it.
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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Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don't talk in English and don't even want to.
Thornton Wilder