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
When you're at war, you think about a better life; when you're at peace you think about a more comfortable one.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that hardship inspires thoughts of improvement, while ease leads to complacency.
Thornton Wilder's quote reflects on the human mindset during different states of existence. When faced with struggle or adversity, individuals are often motivated to seek a better life, pushing them towards change and improvement. In contrast, during peaceful and comfortable times, there is a tendency to become more focused on maintaining that comfort rather than aspiring for growth. This serves as a reminder of the impact of our circumstances on our aspirations and desires.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on personal growth, one could use this quote to highlight the importance of striving for improvement during difficult times.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Similar quotes
Psychiatry in this place is like serving an in-flight meal in the middle of a plane crash. If I wanted to make you well, as a doctor, I should be giving you a parachute, not a cheese-and-pickle sandwich.
No man need fear death, he need fear only that he may die without having known his greatest power: the power of his free will to give his life for others
How could so many intelligent people be so grievously wrong for such an extended period of time? How could they ignore so much overwhelming evidence that contradicted their most basic theories? These questions, too, deserve their own discipline: the sociology of error.
If you told the truth, that was all well and good and if you told the un-truth, well, that's still well and good. Folk songs had taught me that.
Solidarity does not assume that our struggles are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain, or that our hope is for the same future. Solidarity involves commitment, and work, as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies, we do live on common ground.
If we go back to the beginnings of things, we shall always find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that imagination, rapture and deception embellished them; that weakness worships them; that custom spares them; and that tyranny favors them in order to profit from the blindness of men.