"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 Literature See all quotes by Thornton Wilder →

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“A dramatist is one who believes that the pure event, an action involving human beings, is more arresting than any comment that can be made upon it.”

“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 at the Internet Movie Database”

“Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow.”

“Man is not an end but a beginning. We are at the beginning of the second week. We are children of the eighth day.”

“Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Reliable men among the inhabitants of the islands, like the jurist and teacher 'Alî, the judge 'Abdullãh - and others besides them - told me that the inhabitants of these islands were infidels. Subseq…"

— Ibn Battuta

Literature1304–1368

#education

"There's some people who do things so bad it tears the fabric of the world, and then there's some people so sweet and good that they can feel it when the world gets torn. They see things, they know thi…"

— Orson Scott Card

Literature1951–2003

#knowledge

"There are no problems which we cannot solve together, and there are very few which any of us can settle by himself."

— Lyndon B. Johnson

Politics1908–1973

#identity

"This right which you have, is not founded any more than his upon any quality or any merit in yourself which renders you worthy of it. Your soul and your body are, of themselves, indifferent to the sta…"

— Blaise Pascal

Mathematics1623–1662

#nature