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 WilderRead
Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Love can be understood more deeply through personal loss than through years of experience.
This quote by Thornton Wilder emphasizes that a child's raw and immediate experience of love and loss, even if limited in duration, can be more profound and insightful than the accumulated knowledge of adults who have spent a lifetime examining love. It suggests that the purity and intensity of emotions in pure forms of love, such as that between a child and a pet, can reveal truths about love that are often overlooked by those who have grown cynical or distracted by complexity over time.
Themes
LoveLossChildhoodExperienceEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of grief and understanding emotions, this quote can be cited.
More from Thornton Wilder
All quotes →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 a mighty public way.
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Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corners... Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking... and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths...and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
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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.
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Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was nursed by the closest attention to colloquial speech.
Thornton WilderRead
I want you to try and remember what it was like to have been very young. And particularly the days when you were first in love; when you were like a person sleepwalking, and you didn’t quite see the street you were in, and didn’t quite hear everything that was said to you. You’re just a little bit crazy. Will you remember that, please?
Thornton WilderRead
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His face contained for me all possibilities of fierceness and sweetness, pride and submissiveness, violence, self-containment. I never saw more in it than I had when I saw it first, because I saw everything then. The whole thing in him that I was going to love, and never catch or explain.
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Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell,’ Holly advised him. ‘That was Doc’s mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can’t give your heart to a wild thing; the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they’re strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That’s how you’ll end up Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You’ll end up looking at the sky.
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Absence, like death, sets a seal on the image of those we love: we cannot realize the intervening changes which time may have effected.
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That old black magic has me in its spell, That old black magic that you weave so well; Icy fingers up and down my spine, The same old witchcraft when your eyes meet mine.
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