The Eighth Day Quotes

“Faith is a never-ending pool of clarity, reaching far beyond the margins of consciousness. We all know more than we know we know. ”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day

“It is only in appearance that time is a river. It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day

“Guile is the shield and spear of the oppressed.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“She had been through hard straits herself and assumed that persons of quality did not discuss them. Steel exists to support pressure.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“religions are merely the garments of faith—and very ill cut they often are,”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“I think we’re all bad judges of what goes on in other people’s minds about God, Mr. Smith. It’s a bad thing to force a God on a man who doesn’t want one. It’s worse to stand in the way of a man who wants one badly.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“I have long noticed that people who talk to those closest to them only about what they eat, what they wear, the money they make, the trip they will or will not take next week—such people are of two sorts. They either have no inner life, or their inner life is painful to them, is beset with regret or fear.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“Spiders draw just enough silk out of their bowels to catch those half-dozen flies they need to feed themselves and their loved ones; but the rich make silk and silk and silk. Nothing can stop them. Their houses are stuffed with it. Their banks are stuffed with it, and it’s not out of their bowels they make it, but out of the bowels and lungs and eyeballs of others.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“Dissipated men need one trustworthy friend.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“The growing children are misshapen by those parents who were in various ways warped by the blindness, ignorance, and passions of their own parents; and one’s own errors impoverish and cripple one’s children? Such is the endless chain of the generations?”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“In the early summer of 1902 John Barrington”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“We all know more than we know we know.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“family life is like that of nations: each member battles for his measure of air and light, of nourishment and territory, and particularly for that measure of admiration and attention which is called ‘glory.’ It is like a forest; each tree must fight for its sunlight; under the ground the roots engage in a death struggle for moisture. We are told that some even exude an acidity that is noxious to all except themselves. Mr. Frazier, in every lively healthy family there is one who must pay.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“Christmas, 1905 This is a history. But there is only one history. It began with the creation of man and will come to an end when the last human consciousness is extinguished.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“(It was not necessary to explain that nothing escaped the eyes of Coaltown except the truth.)”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“The management had prudently replaced the chairs with benches and packing cases. For men without women a cave is sufficient.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“Most people think they work; they can kill themselves with their diligence. They think they’re building Atenas, but they’re only shining their own shoes. When I was young I used to be astonished at how little progress was made in the world—all those fine words, all those noble talkative men and women, those plans, those cornerstones, those constitutions drawn up for ideal republics. They don’t make a dent on the average man or woman. The wife, like Delilah, crops her husband’s hair; the father stifles his children. From time to time everyone goes into an ecstasy about the glorious advance of civilization—the miracle of vaccination, the wonders of the railroad. But the excitement dies down and there we are again—wolves and hyenas, wolves and peacocks.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“Life is a series of disappointments, Mr. Tolland. Life is a series of promises that come to nothing.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“Life affords no second chances,” he thought. “Is this what growing older is—seeing always more clearly the things we failed to see?”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“she quoted the Spanish proverb, “The oak tree is in the acorn.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“Faith founded schools; it is not dependent on them. A high authority has told us that we are more likely to find faith in an old woman on her knees scrubbing the floors of a public building than in a bishop on his throne.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous. The defeat of hope leads not to despair, but to resignation. The resignation of those who have had a grasp of hope retains hope’s power.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“A man can produce fortitude from his own vitals, but the true food of valor is example.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“It is the diversity of life that renders thinking difficult. Many a beginning philosopher has been on the point of grasping the problem of suffering, but what sage can cope with that of happiness? At”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“When God loves a creature He wants the creature to know the highest happiness and the deepest misery—then he can die. He wants him to know all that being alive can bring. That is His best gift.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“She looked at him a moment in silence and wonder. She did not yet know that she was a great actress—that the knowledge of how men and women behave in extremity was at the center of her lifework”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day: A Novel

“Не может быть счастлив по-настоящему тот, кто не изведал ужаса nada.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day

“Если господь возлюбит одно из своих созданий, то даст ему познать высшее счастье и глубочайшее горе, прежде чем наступит час его смерти. Даст изведать все, чем богата жизнь. И это самый ценный господень дар.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day

“Жизнь — смех слабоумного в пустоте…”
― Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day