Thornton Wilder Quotes - Page 5

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• Leadership is for those who love the public good and are endowed and trained to administer it.

  Thornton Wilder

  Public Good

  Thornton Wilder (2009). “The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Other Novels, 1926-1948”

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• Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipients of confidences.

  Thornton Wilder

  Self, Quiet, Silent

  "The Eighth Day". Book by Thornton Wilder, 1967.

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• Characterization in a play is like a blank check which the dramatist accords to the actor for him to fill in.

  Thornton Wilder

  Play, Actors, Checks

  Thornton Wilder (2014). “The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder, Volume T”, p.266, Theatre Communications Group

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• The unencumbered stage encourages the truth operative in everyone. The less seen, the more heard. The eye is the enemy of the ear in real drama.

  Thornton Wilder

  Real, Drama, Eye

  1961 In the New York Times, 6 Nov.

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• Pride, avarice, and envy are in every home.

  Thornton Wilder

  Home, Pride, Envy

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• Imprisonment of the body is bitter; imprisonment of the mind is worse

  Thornton Wilder

  Mind, Body, Bitter

  Thornton Wilder (2014). “The Ides of March: A Novel”, p.15, Harper Collins

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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

  Lying, Judging, Telling The Truth

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• The comic spirit is given to us in order that we may analyze, weigh, and clarify things in us which nettle us, or which we are outgrowing, or trying to reshape

  Thornton Wilder

  Funny, Humor, Order

  Thornton Wilder, Jackson R. Bryer (1992). “Conversations with Thornton Wilder”, p.15, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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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 beginning of the 20th century. This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our living and in our dying.

  Thornton Wilder

  New York, Growing Up, Book

  Thornton Wilder (1968). “Our town: a play in three acts”

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• One of the dangers of the American artist is that he finds himself almost exclusively thrown in with persons more or less in the arts. He lives among them, eats among them, quarrels with them, marries them.

  Thornton Wilder

  Art, Danger, Quarrels

  Thornton Wilder, Jackson R. Bryer (1992). “Conversations with Thornton Wilder”, p.66, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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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.

  Thornton Wilder

  Children, Winning, Want

  Interview in "Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, First Series", edited by Malcolm Cowley, 1958.

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• I hold we cannot be said to be aware of our minds save under responsibility.

  Thornton Wilder

  Responsibility, Mind, Awareness

  Thornton Wilder (2009). “The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Other Novels, 1926-1948”

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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

  Hate, Rip, House

  "Fictional character: Uncle Charlie Oakley". "Shadow of a Doubt", en.wikiquote.org. 1943.

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• There is no creation without faith and hope. There is no faith and hope that does not express itself in creation.

  Thornton Wilder

  Faith, Doe, Hope And Faith

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• [Whenever] you get near the human race, there's layers and layers of nonsense.

  Thornton Wilder

  Race, Layers, Our Town

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• There is one regard in which bullies show real perception when compared with their victims; it is their silent good-natured pleasure of the moment.

  Thornton Wilder

  Bullying, Real, Perception

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• What is essential does not die but clarifies.

  Thornton Wilder

  Healing, Essentials, Doe

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• The revival in religion will be a rhetorical problem - new persuasive words for defaced or degraded ones.

  Thornton Wilder

  Problem, Revival, Persuasive

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• On the stage it is always now; the personages are standing on that razor-edge, between the past and the future, which is the essential character of conscious being.

  Thornton Wilder

  Character, Past, Essentials

  Thornton Wilder, Jackson R. Bryer (1992). “Conversations with Thornton Wilder”, p.71, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• The planting of trees is the least self-centered of all that we can do. It is a purer act of faith than the procreation of children.

  Thornton Wilder

  Faith, Children, Self

  "The Eighth Day". Book by Thornton Wilder, 1967.

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• Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she's a householder.

  Thornton Wilder

  Funny, Marriage, Thinking

  Merchant of Yonkers (1939) act 1

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• The theatre is supremely fitted to say: 'Behold! These things are.' Yet most dramatists employ it to say: 'This moral truth can be learned from beholding this action.'

  Thornton Wilder

  Theatre, Action, Moral

  Thornton Wilder, Jackson R. Bryer (1992). “Conversations with Thornton Wilder”, p.71, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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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.

  Thornton Wilder

  Money, Differences, World

  Thornton Wilder (1962). “Three Plays: Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Matchmaker”

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• A dramatist is one who from his earliest years has found that sheer gazing at the shocks and counter-shocks among people is quite sufficiently engrossing without having to encase it in comment.

  Thornton Wilder

  Years, People, Gazing

  Thornton Wilder, Jackson R. Bryer (1992). “Conversations with Thornton Wilder”, p.72, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• A convention is an agreed-upon falsehood, a permitted lie.

  Thornton Wilder

  Lying, Conventions, Falsehood

  Thornton Wilder (2014). “The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder, Volume T”, p.269, Theatre Communications Group

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