"My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate — that's my philosophy."

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

"Phenomenology is not a philosophy; it is a philosophical method, a tool. It is like an adjustable spanner that can be used for dismantling a refrigerator or a car, or used for hammering in nails, or e…"

— Colin Wilson

Literature1989–2013

#philosophy

"Strikingly, no concern was voiced over the glaringly obvious fact that no official reason was ever offered for going to war — no reason, that is, that could not be instantly refuted by a literate teen…"

— Noam Chomsky

Philosophy1928

#philosophy

"In the eight years since his father’s death, Patrick’s youth had slipped away without being replaced by any signs of maturity, unless the tendency for sadness and exhaustion to eclipse hatred and insa…"

— Edward St. Aubyn

Literature1837–1914

#philosophy

"This church, so “fruitful in all good things,” invented crimes that it might punish. This church tried men for a “suspicion of heresy”—imprisoned them for the vice of being suspected—stripped them of …"

— Robert G. Ingersoll

Law1833–1899

#philosophy