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Life Quotes by Thornton Wilder

40 Life quotes by Thornton Wilder

All Life quotes Thornton Wilder’s page

Wounds as power is a striking image in Wilder’s reflections, where pain fuels a trembling voice that reaches others. He asks us to choose between blending into a crowd of fools or standing alone, and he calls love the bridge that links the living with the dead. Moments feel alive when our hearts notice the hidden treasures around us.

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Choose the least important day in your life. It will be important enough.

Thornton Wilder

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People are meant to go through life two by two. ’Tain’t natural to be lonesome.

Thornton Wilder

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Life is an unbroken succession of false situations.

Thornton Wilder

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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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“Does anybody realize what life is while they're living it- every, every minute?”

Thornton Wilder

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Enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate.

Thornton Wilder

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Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?

Thornton Wilder

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Even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other.

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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There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the…

Thornton Wilder

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EMILY: "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?" STAGE MANAGER: "No. Saints and poets maybe...they do some.

Thornton Wilder

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“The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels…

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…

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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Life is a fatal adventure. It can only have one end. So why not make it as far-ranging and free as possible.

Thornton Wilder

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But there comes a moment in everybody's life when he must decide whether he'll live among the human beings or not -…

Thornton Wilder

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Without your wounds where would your power be? It is your melancholy that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of…

Thornton Wilder

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“Without your wounds where would your power be? It is your melancholy that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of…

Thornton Wilder

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People a thousand years from now - this is the way we were in the provinces north of New York at the…

Thornton Wilder

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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…

Thornton Wilder

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“If there were any plan in the universe at all, if there were any pattern in human life, surely it could be…

Thornton Wilder

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A living is made, Mr Kemper, by selling something that everybody needs at least once a year.Yes, sir! And a million ismade…

Thornton Wilder

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“The first and last schoolmaster of life is living and committing oneself unreservedly and dangerously to living; to men who know this…

Thornton Wilder

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“They had been brought up to think that the domestic virtues were self-evident and universal; they had been starved of the knowledge…

Thornton Wilder

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“Let's really look at one another!...It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So…

Thornton Wilder

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That’s what it was like to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling…

Thornton Wilder

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“Most of all, however, these observances attack and undermine the very spirit of life within the minds of men. They afford to…

Thornton Wilder

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“Yes, now you know. Now you know! That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance;…

Thornton Wilder

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“She had never brought courage to either life or love. Her eyes ransacked her heart. She thought of the amulets and of…

Thornton Wilder

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“Am I sure that there is no mind behind our existence and no mystery anywhere in the universe? I think I am.…

Thornton Wilder

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“Cesar is not a philosophical man. His life has been one long flight from reflection. At least he is clever enough not…

Thornton Wilder

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“He divided the inhabitants of this world into two groups, into those who had loved and those who had not. It was…

Thornton Wilder

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“Emily: Oh, Mama, look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, fourteen years have gone by. I'm dead.…

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…

Thornton Wilder

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“Many who have dedicated their life to love, can tell us less about this subject than a child who lost his dog…

Thornton Wilder

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But there comes a time in everybody's life when he must decide whether he'll live among human beings or nota fool among…

Thornton Wilder

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Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it --…

Thornton Wilder

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“But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is…

Thornton Wilder

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How terrifying and glorious the role of man if, indeed, without guidance and without consolation he must create from his own vitals…

Thornton Wilder

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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…

Thornton Wilder

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More by Thornton Wilder

“He respected the slight nervous shadow that crossed her face when he came too near her. But there arose out of this denial itself…

Thornton Wilder

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

“Simon Stimson: "...That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on…

Thornton Wilder

“Love as education is one of the great powers of the world, but it hangs in a delicate suspension; it achieves its harmony as…

Thornton Wilder

Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was nursed by the closest…

Thornton Wilder

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…

Thornton Wilder

The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs.

Thornton Wilder

“But while they continued staring into one another’s face waiting for the miracle of science the pain grew worse.”

Thornton Wilder

I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of…

Thornton Wilder

Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.

Thornton Wilder

“Cesar is not a philosophical man. His life has been one long flight from reflection. At least he is clever enough not to expose…

Thornton Wilder

Every person who has ever lived has lived an unbroken succession of unique occasions.

Thornton Wilder

“Without your wounds where would your power be? It is your melancholy that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men and…

Thornton Wilder

Ninety-nine per cent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.

Thornton Wilder

There's nothing like mixing with woman to bring out all the foolishness in a man of sense.

Thornton Wilder