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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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Thornton Wilder
Age: 78 †
Born: 1897
Born: April 17
Died: 1975
Died: December 7
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Madison
Wisconsin
Thornton Niven Wilder
Matter
Fronts
Like
Hell
World
Doubt
Hate
House
Swine
Happens
Rip
Doe
Foul
Find
Houses

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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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We live in what is, but we find a thousand ways not to face it. Great theater strengthens our faculty to face it.
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Where there is an unknowable, there is a promise.
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People are meant to go through life two by two. ’Tain’t natural to be lonesome.
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Imprisonment of the body is bitter imprisonment of the mind is worse
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The public for which masterpieces are intended is not of this earth.
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What is essential does not die but clarifies.
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There's nothing like mixing with women to bring out all the foolishness in a man of sense.
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The stuff of which masterpieces are made drifts about the world waiting to be clothed in words.
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Look at that moon. Potato weather for sure.
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Every good thing in the world stands on the razor-edge of danger.
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Money is like manure it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow.
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Winning children (who appear so guileless) are children who have discovered how effective charm and modesty and a delicately calculated spontaneity are in winning what they want.
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Nature reserves the right to inflict upon her children the most terrifying jests.
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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.
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I've never forgotten for long at a time that living is struggle. I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for - whether it's a field, or a home, or a country.
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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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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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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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A sense of humor judges one's actions and the actions of others from a wider reference. It pardons shortcomings, it consoles failure.
Thornton Wilder