Barely Commented Thornton Wilder Quotes

These are from “The Eighth Day,” which I am still reading, and which I note here so I don’t simply forget them.  I don’t know if I agree; I do know they merit a little more thought.

About John Ashley:

Men [and women] of faith […] are not afraid; they are not self-regarding; they are constantly nourished by astonishment and wonder at life itself.  They are not interesting.  They lack those traits – our bosom companions – that so strongly engage our interest: aggression, the dominating will, envy, destructiveness and self-destructiveness.  […]  They have little sense of humor, which draws so heavily on a consciousness of superiority and on an aloofness from the predicaments of others.  In general they are inarticulate, especially in matters of faith.  […]  They are slow to give words to the object of their faith.  To them it is self-evident and the self-evident is not easily described.  But men and women without faith, they are articulate.  They are constantly and loudly expatiating on it: it is ‘faith in life’, in the ‘meaning of life’, in God, in progress, in humanity – all those whipped words, those twisted signposts, that borrowed finery, all that traitor’s eloquence.

I can’t entirely agree with him – after all, if all men of faith are not interesting, and John Ashley is such a man, I should not be fascinated by John Ashley’s story.

A bit more on faith:

There is no creation without faith and hope.  There is no faith and hope that does not express itself in creation.  These men and women work.  The spectacle that most discourages them is not error or ignorance or cruelty, but sloth.  This work that they do may often seem to be all but imperceptible.  That is characteristic of activity that never for a moment envisages an audience.

John Ashley speaking to his horse:

“Evangeline, I’m a family man.  That’s all.  I have no talents.  I’m not even an engineer [which he was by profession].  All I have to show, living and dying, is that I’m a family man.”

Well, that’s enough for now.  The quotes are on pages 98-100 and 106-107 in the UK Penguin paperback dated 1969, at the outset of chapter 2.

14 thoughts on “Barely Commented Thornton Wilder Quotes

  1. thduggie Post author

    And another, on Miss Doubkov, page 69:

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

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  2. thduggie Post author

    And another, on John Ashley’s mind, page 115:

    Clarity is a noble quality of mind, but those who primarily demand clarity of themselves miss many a truth which – with patience – might become clear at some future time. Minds that are impatient for clarity – or even reasonableness – become gradually narrower and dryer.

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  3. thduggie Post author

    Another few, first one about the Ashleys’ house “The Elms,” page 27:

    The house had long stood vacant. The people of lower Illinois are not given to superstition; they did not say the house was haunted, but it was known that ‘The Elms’ has been built in spite, maintained in hatred, and abandoned in tragedy. Every town of some size had one or two such houses. John Ashley was more superstitious than his neighbors; he believed that no misfortune could befall him.

    Next, page 130, on native workers beating their wives:

    ‘The men can’t strike us. We are foreigners, unbelievably rich, semi-divine. They can’t strike their foremen – though once in a while they can ambush and shoot them. They strike one another, but they don’t put their heart into it. They know they’re all caught in the same desperate trap. But they can beat those who are nearest to them. The blows are aimed at circumstance, at destiny, at God. […]’
    ‘But …’ Ashley remembered protesting, falteringly, ‘the men are drunk.’
    ‘That’s too easy an explanation, sir. They are devoted husbands and fathers. They get drunk in order to be brutal, to release themselves to strike at God.’

    On the problem of suffering, page 135:

    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 the problem of happiness?

    On Ashley’s mother’s adoration of her son, page 137:

    His mother idolized her son, adored him. Even in the religious realm, these emotions often conceal an unspoken contract. Adoration of a human being, under guise of self-effacement and humility, advances large claims and is an attempt at possession.

    Still thinking back on his family, this time his closet miser of a father, page 138:

    […] Ashley realized that he had formed himself to be the opposite of his father and that his life had been as mistaken as his father’s. The root of avarice is the fear of what circumstance may bring. The opposite of the miser is not the spendthrift of the parable – the prodigal son who wastes his substance in riotous living – but the grasshopper who heedlessly sings through a long summer.

    More on Ashley’s personality on page 140:

    Ashley seldom laughed; he did not despise laughter, but it seemed to him to be prompted by unimportant digressions that delayed the sober occupations of life.

    And finally (for now), Ashley’s reaction to a room painted in blue up to eye level to emulate the sea and decorated with a crucifix, pages 140-141:

    Through the open door and windows the wealth of the garden threatened to inundate the room in a many-colored tide. For Ashley the function of a room was to be serviceable; it had never occurred to him that it could be beautiful. He who lacked so many qualities – humor, ambition, vanity, reflection – had never distinguished a category of the beautiful. Some pictures on grocers’ calendars had pleased him. At school he had been praised for the ‘beauty’ of his mechanical drawings. We remember how on his flight through Illinois he had been overwhelmed by the beauty of dawn, and later of Chimborazo, and of his Chilean peaks. He sat down in a high-backed chair and looked about him. He became aware of an odd sensation in his throat: he sobbed. His eyes rested on the exhausted and submissive head on the wall before him. The world was a place of cruelty, suffering, and confusion, but men and women could surmount despair by making beautiful things, emulating the beauty of the first creation.

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  4. thduggie Post author

    On staying faithful to his wife, page 157:

    [A]ny resolut person can conquer the demands of the flesh; he had a harder battle to win. He had known only one woman; he had had no experience of disassociating love from its train of attendants – companionship, courage, consolation, unfolding knowledge, and – in parenthood – creation.

    Ashley standing up for the miners, page 159:

    ‘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.’

    On the new priest straight from Spain, page 163:

    Ashley could scarcely apprehend the extent to which he carried an irrational repulsion from Protestants. He had hitherto seen very few in his life – tourists, book in hand, impiously strolling about his cathedral as though they were in a railway station. He assumed that Protestants were a despised minority on the earth’s surface, crawling about abashedly, aware of their abjection but too satanically proud to acknowledge their error.

    On Mrs Wickersham, the heart of Manantiales, page 169:

    Doers of good have their seasons of weakness. They know that there is no spiritual vulgarity equal to that of expecting gratitude and admiration, but they allow themselves to be seduced by the sweet fantasies of self-pity.

    On Wellington Bristow, page 172:

    Wellington Bristow was every inch a businessman and a genius at it, but he loved negotiation more than money; he was of a generous nature; and he was joyous. Hence he had three strikes against him. […] He sacrificed his very commissions to render the deal more exciting. He loved business for its own sake. What little money he had he could not keep. He was constantly giving presents he could not afford, which is the soul of generosity. […] No one has ever seen a successful businessman who is joyous, for joy is the praise of the whole and cannot exist where there are ulterior aims. His joy was of the purest sort; it stole its gaiety from dejection and danger. What a talker he was, what a persuader! All appearance took on whatever coloring he imposed upon it. The great persuaders are those without principles; sincerity stammers.

    Mrs Wickersham on miracles, page 183:

    ‘[…] I don’t believe in miracles, but I couldn’t exist if I didn’t feel that things like miracles were happening all around me. Of course, there’s an explanation for what you’ve told me – but explanations are for people who carry dull minds through dull lives. I feel thirty years younger.’

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  5. thduggie Post author

    On humor, page 192:

    A sense of humor judges one’s actions and the actions of others from a wider reference and a longer view and finds them incongruous. It dampens enthusiasm; it mocks hope, it pardons shortcomings, it consoles failure. It recommends moderation. This wider reference and longer view are not the gifts of any extraordinary wisdom; they are merely the condensed opinion of a given community at a given moment.

    Roger Ashley’s reaction to the crowds in Chicago, page 196:

    Chicago’s like a big clockshop – all those little hammers going. In the street people put on a face so that strangers won’t read their souls. A crowd is a sterner judge than a relative or friend. The crowd is God. LaSalle Street is like hell – you’re being judged all the time….Suicide very logical.

    Talking to someone who believes in reincarnation, page 202:

    ‘You don’t really believe that, do you, Peter?’
    Peter, upside down, rested his pale watery eyes on Roger and waited. ‘Never ask a man what he believes. Watch what he uses. “Believe” is a dead word and brings death with it.’

    Roger’s thoughts on college education, page 205:

    He had no wish to go to any of those colleges, or – for a time, at least – to read any of those famous books. He had walked the streets of Chicago at all hours. He had listened to scores of life stories. Man is cruel to man and even those who are kind to those nearest them are inhuman to others. It’s not kindness that’s important but justice. Kindness is the stammering apology of the unjust. The whole world’s wrong, he saw. There’s something wrong at the heart of the world and he would track it down. Many of those books and colleges had been around for hundreds of years – with very little effect.

    His impression of medicine, page 207:

    To his eyes medicine appeared to be a business of patch and shore and bolster – the temporary repair of unsalvageable vessels. He was an ignorant country boy; he had no idea that medicine could take a different view of itself.

    Still page 207, the description of where the journalists lived in a hotel:

    This corridor had long since lost its institutional uniformity. Most of the doors had been shattered in rage or horseplay and removed. The management had prudently replaced the chairs with benches and packing cases. For men without women a cave is sufficient.

    And on the journalists themselves, pages 207 and 208:

    They were rich in all the knowledge they were not permitted to print. Knowledge, like courage and virtue, isolates a man; they were thrown back on one another’s company. Barred from publishing what they knew, they were driven to seek out some other mode of expression: they were conversationalists. […] They were untalented reporters because their ambitions lay elsewhere […]. They were quick-witted; they had a wide if heterogeneous field of information. Above all they had a point of view: the abject condition of man and the futility of his efforts to improve himself. Any confrontation with fortitude, heroism, piety, or even dignity rendered them uncomfortable. They prided themselves on being impressed by nothing. Any impulse toward admiration or compassion they promptly converted into ribaldry and persiflage.

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  6. thduggie Post author

    Last one for today. On operas, page 209:

    One evening a reporter gave him a ticket to the opera. He attended a performance of Fidelio. It was an overwhelming experience. […] A man can produce fortitude from his own vitals, but the true food of valor is example. […] If operas were like that – if they concerned themselves with things that really mattered (rendered all but unendurably convincing by such wonderful noise) – he must so arrange his life as to be constantly present at them.

    On writing letters in the Ashley household, page 213:

    Both [Roger and his mother] had written many drafts for these Christmas letters; the emotion had been consigned to the wastepaper baskets.

    From T.G. Speidel, nihilist, dean of the journalists, pages 218-219:

    The most sacred thing in the world is property. It’s more sacred than conscience. It’s more untouchable than a woman’s reputation. And for all its importance, no one, NO ONE, has ever attempted to put a qualifying value on it. Property can be unearned, unmerited, extorted, abused, misspent, without losing one iota of its sacred character – its religious character.

    He continues on about “the lie about property” and uses the word sockdologer. T.G.’s monologues are great examples of how someone gets it all wrong but gets enough chunks right to sound, if not convincing, then at least intriguing. On pages 220-221 he goes on about fathers:

    Listen to me: all fathers hate their sons. They hate them – first! – because they know that their sons will be going around whistling in the sunlight when they’re rotting under the ground. […] Second! They’re terrified that the boys may make less of a mess of their lives than they’ve made. It’s a terrible thought that that man whom you knew as a little smeller in the cradle, as an idiotic puppy, as a troublemaking pimply adolescent – him! – that he could make a better showing in life than you’ve done. Terrible! […] No father since the beginning of time has ever given a word of advice or encouragement that would lead to his son’s thinking big and planning big. No, sir-eee! Dad sweats and wrings his hands and advises caution and going slow and keeping to the middle of the road. That passes under the name of paternal affection.

    I’ll try to prove him wrong – though I am one to advise caution…
    The Maestro on art, pages 243-245, one I include particularly because of Wilder’s fine ear for how men can paradoxically declaim self-conscious self-contradictions with utter sincerity:

    Mr Frazier, works of art are the only satisfactory products of civilization. History, in itself, has nothing to show. History is the record of man’s repeated failures to extricate himself from his incorrigible nature. Those who see progress in it are as deluded as those who see a gradual degeneration. […] I don’t believe in God. I believe that those celebrated men and women – Mary of Nazareth and her family – are now each a pinch of dust, like all the billions of men and women who have died. But the representations of such beings are man’s greatest achievement. […] Who can count the prayers that have ascended to gods who do not exist? Mankind has himself created sources of help where there is no help and sources of consolation where there is no consolation. Yet such works as these are the only satisfying products of culture.

    Finally, we return to the opera on page 251, Lily Ashley speaking:

    One day I told the Maestro that I thought that most of the heroines in opera were silly geese. He said “Yes, of course. Opera is about greedy possessive passion. The girls make one mistake after another. They’re little whirlpools of destruction. First they bring death down on the baritones and basses – their fathers, guardians, or brothers; then they bring it down on the tenors. Then at half past eleven they go mad, or stab themselves, or jump into a fire, or get strangled. Or they just expire. Self-centered possessive love. The women in the audience cry a little, but on the way home they’re already planning tomorrow’s dinner!”

    There are 140 pages more to go.

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  7. thduggie Post author

    Page 260, on John Ashley:

    He was the only child of doting parents in upper New York State. Idolized sons are not noted for gratitude or obedience.

    On snobbery, page 269:

    Snobbery is a passion. It is a noble passion that has gone astray amid appearances. It springs from a desire to escape the trivial and to be included among those who have no petty cares, no tedious moments, among those whose very misfortunes are lofty.

    On Beata Ashley’s father, pages 270-271:

    In Hoboken he was long the president of the best (of four) Sängervereine until he could no longer endure the banality of its programs. He grew tired of hearing forty obese men proclaim the joys of a hunter’s life and bid passing birds report their breaking hearts to their beloved.

    On her mother, page 271:

    She did not permit any discussion of the relative wealth or poverty of their friends. If her husband had entered the house one day and told her that he was bankrupt, she would have uttered no word of complaint. She would have moved to a slum and improved the tone of the neighborhood.

    On family life, page 272:

    Family life is like a hall endowed with the finest acoustical properties. Growing children hear not only their parents’ words (and in most cases gradually ignore them), they hear the intentions, the attitdes behind the words. Above all they learn what their parents really admire, really despise.

    On John Ashley’s kind of independence, page 275:

    John Ashley wanted all things new. He must be the first man who has earned his bread, to take a wife, to beget a child. Everything is filled with wonder – a bride, a first salary cheque, the infant in one’s arms. To announce these things to persons who think they are everyday occurrences is to endanger one’s own sense of their radiance.

    On a writer, “Atticus,” who “had left America for the shores of the Thames and the Seine” and “from that safe distance, having taken out British citizenship, […] reviewed the horrors and absurdities of his native land:”

    He attacked the Ashley with surprising virulence. […] Atticus stressed their propensity to commit social errors. It seems to have particularly annoyed him that they remained unabashed by these inelegant faux pas. It is true: certain discriminations were missing in the Ashleys. They were unable to distinguish shades of rank, wealth, birth, color, or servitude. In addition, Atticus felt that they were lacking in self-respect. They were slow to anger. They were serene under snub and insult. He was unable to deny their intelligence, but characterized it as lacking ‘suppleness’ and charm. He reserved his most biting deprecation for the end of his chapter. The last paragraph developed the idea that the Ashleys were – indubitably (he hated to say it, but the truth must come out; they were indubitably) Americans.

    Typing it up, I wonder why I appreciate that last paragraph but don’t appreciate Mallard Fillmore, who uses much of the same technique.

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  8. thduggie Post author

    Some more, while waiting for photos to upload.

    On servants in a St. Kitts household, page 283:

    These servants were supposedly paid three shillings a month, but they had little need of money. Their meals, clothing, medical care, whippings, and amusement were supplied by their masters.

    On boredom, page 283:

    Boredom […] should not be mistaken for lethargy. Boredom is energy frustrated of outlet. She had been a woman of forceful character; little of it was left except her towering rages.

    On patriarchy, page 297:

    We may assume that when a patriarchal order is at its height – or a matriarchal order, also – it has a certain grandeur. It contributes to the even running of society and to harmony in the home. Everyone knows his place. The head of the family is always right. Fatherhood invests him with a more than personal wisdom. […] It is when the patriarchal order is undergoing transition – the pendulum swings in eternal oscillation between the male and female poles – that havoc descends upon the state and on the family. Fathers feel the pavement cracking beneath them. For a time they shout, argue, boast, and pour scorn upon the wife of their bosom and the pledges of their love. Abraham did not raise his voice.

    (It seems to me, too, that during these transitions all parties want to hold on to their rights longer than their responsibilities, and impose them with show and posturing rather than on grounds of merit.)
    Eustacia Lansing thinks about her life, page 303:

    ‘We are our lives. Everything is bound together. No smallest action can be thought other than it is.’ She groped among the concepts of necessity and free will. Everything is mysterious, but how unendurable life would be without the mystery.

    And again from Eustacia Lansing, page 308:

    Slowly she had learned that beautiful things are not for our possession but for our contemplation.

    Eustacia talks about education with her son George, page 317:

    ‘I want you to have an education, George.’
    ‘I’m better educated than the fellows in those schools. I know algebra and chemistry and history. I just don’t like examinations.

    Roughly 50 more pages to go. Let’s see if the pictures haven’t uploaded already.

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  9. thduggie Post author

    I finished the book late into the night yesterday – with just about 30 pages left, I decided not to put it down. Here are the last quotes, the last of what I hope is a helpful review of sorts.

    On giving to our children, page 366:

    All this candor and self-confidence were a gift to her from her father and brother. The fairest gifts – and the most baneful – are those of which the donor is unconscious; they are conveyed over the years in the innumerable occasions of the daily life – in glance, pause, jest, silence, smile, expressions of admiration or disapproval.

    Looking at the graveyard of the Convenant Church in Herkomer’s Knob, page 387:

    There were no tombstones or markers of any kind. Roger did not voice his question.
    ‘The dead are given new names in Heaven, Mr Ashley. Here our names and bodies soon decay and are forgotten. My name is Samuel O’Hara; there are at least ten Samuel O’Haras in this field.’ His voice took on a dryness of tone. ‘Why should I wish an advertisement of myself here when I stand before God’s face?’

    “The Eighth Day” is a book that can stand to have its last paragraph quoted without spoiling the reading for anyone. It’s on page 396:

    History is one tapestry. No eye can venture to compass more than a hand’s breadth. . . . […]
    There is much talk of design in the arras. Some are certain they see it. Some see what they have been told to see. Some remember that they saw it once but have lost it. Some are strengthened by seeing a pattern wherein the oppressed and exploited of the earth are gradually emerging from their bondage. Some find strength in the conviction that there is nothing to see. Some. . . .

    That last paragraph was a bit of a let-down for me. I had invested in the characters; Wilder treats them with such respect and gentle redemption that I found it jarring for the book to end like that. “Well, that’s the story, but I’m not sure there’s a point to it.” I think having a new family made me connect more deeply with all the observations on family and the sweeping perspective covering several years and tracing different family members; I know for sure that when I slipped under the covers next to Janet (fifteen minutes before Joseph was to wake hungry) I felt that if I wasn’t the luckiest man alive, I certainly must be among the first runners-up. I also realized I better live like I believed that, and one first step might be going to bed at the same time as Janet. And if that’s what a book does to me, it deserves a recommendation, even if it kept me up past bedtime.

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  10. Lindsey Marks

    Faith is an ever-widening pool of clarity, fed from springs beyond the margin of consciousness. We all know more than we know we know.

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  11. Lindsey Marks

    Sorry for the lack of citation. I am not sure what page number this comes from. It is just a little something I memorized from ‘The Eighth Day’. I am fairly sure, though, that it comes from the section about Ashley traveling from Illinois to Chile.

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  12. thduggie Post author

    Thanks, Lindsey! I still don’t know why Wilder’s editorializing style is so out of fashion these days. Maybe it’s just extremely hard to pull off well.

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