Thornton Wilder quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Thornton Wilder

Thornton Wilder Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Thornton Wilder on Wise Famous Quotes.

Contemplating Clodia I find scarcely a drop in my heart of that compassion which Epicurus enjoins us to extend toward the erring.

It is only dogs that never bite their masters.

The revival in religion will be a rhetorical problem - new persuasive words for defaced or degraded ones.

A sense of humor judges one's actions and the actions of others from a wider reference. It pardons shortcomings, it consoles failure.

What is essential does not die but clarifies.

Heaven's my destination.

Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipients of confidences.

Life is a fatal adventure. It can only have one end. So why not make it as far-ranging and free as possible.

Henceforth letter-writing had to take the place of all the affection that could not be lived.

The past and the future are always present within us.

That's the advantage of having lived sixty-five years. You don't feel the need to be impatient any longer.

As Plato, the dangerous beguiler, said: the best philosophers in the world are boys with their beards new on their chins; I am a boy again.

The best thing about animals is that they don't talk much.

Art is not only the desire to tell one's secret; it is the desire to tell it and hide it at the same time.

Dissipated men need one trustworthy friend.

We all have time to expend on what is essential to our nature.

Marriage is a bribe to make the housekeeper think she's a householder.

Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.

I think that it can be assumed that no adults are ever really 'shocked' - that being shocked is always a pose.

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.

On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.

The public for which masterpieces are intended is not of this earth.

Even speech was for them was a debased form of silence; how much more futile is poetry which is a debased form of speech.

On Friday noon, July twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travellers into the gulf below.

I can't look at everything hard enough!

The best thing about animals is they don't talk much

I rose by sheer military ability to the rank of corporal.

The marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she is a householder.

There is one regard in which bullies show real perception when compared with their victims; it is their silent good-natured pleasure of the moment.

A convention is an agreed-upon falsehood, a permitted lie.

An incinerator is a writer's best friend.

People are meant to go through life two by two. 'Tain't natural to be lonesome.

Even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other.

Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.

Love is an energy which exists of itself. It is its own value.

Guile is the shield and spear of the oppressed.

There are few pleasures equal to that of imparting to a voracious learner the knowledge that one has grown old and weary in acquiring.

Perhaps she would learn in time to permit both her daughter and her gods to govern their own affairs.

EMILY: "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it ... every, every minute?"
STAGE MANAGER: "No. Saints and poets maybe ... they do some.

Leadership is for those who love the public good and are endowed and trained to administer it.

So - people a thousand years from now ... This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying.

In advertising, not to be different is virtual suicide.

Favors cease to be favors when there are conditions attached to them.

Man is not an end but a beginning. We are at the beginning of the second week. We are children of the eighth day.

I think I write in order to discover on my shelf a new book that I would enjoy reading, or to see a new play that would engross me.

But while they continued staring into one another's face waiting for the miracle of science the pain grew worse.

My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it is on your plate.

A play visibly represents pure existing.

Enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate.

Life is an unbroken succession of false situations.

I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.

Many who have dedicated their life to love, can tell us less about this subject than a child who lost his dog yesterday.

MRS. ANTROBUS: What, George? What have you lost? ANTROBUS: The most important thing of all: The desire to begin again, to start building.

In love's service, only the wounded soldier can serve.

Does anybody realize what life is
while they're living it- every, every minute?

I not only bow to the inevitable; I am fortified by it.

I hold we cannot be said to be aware of our minds save under responsibility.

When you're at war, you think about a better life; when you're at peace you think about a more comfortable one.

I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for.

The stuff of which masterpieces are made drifts about the world waiting to be clothed in words.

Faith is a never-ending pool of clarity, reaching far beyond the margins of consciousness. We all know more than we know we know.

In the early summer of 1902 John Barrington

Imprisonment of the body is bitter; imprisonment of the mind is worse

The planting of trees is the least self-centered of all that we can do. It is a purer act of faith than the procreation of children.

There is no drunkenness equal to that of remembering whispered words in the night.

Pride, avarice, and envy are in every home.

An American is insubmissive, lonely, self-educated, and polite.

The future is the most expensive luxury in the world.

The unencumbered stage encourages the truth operative in everyone. The less seen, the more heard. The eye is the enemy of the ear in real drama.

Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.

Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow.

It is very necessary to have markers of beauty left in a world seemingly bent on making the most evil ugliness.

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

Characterization in a play is like a blank check which the dramatist accords to the actor for him to fill in.

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent.

The best part of married life is the fights. The rest is merely so-so.

The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.

Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.

I am my own judge of what truths I shall tell. The truth can do just as much harm as a lie.

The most exhausting of all our adventures is that journey down the long corridors of the mind to the last halls where belief is enthroned.

But such occasions of excellence became less and less frequent. As her technique became sounder, [her] sincerity became less necessary.

Everybody's talking about people breaking into houses but there are more people in the world who want to break out of houses.

The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs.

If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good

Everybody has a right to their own troubles.

Comparisons of one's lot with others' teaches us nothing and enfeebles the will.

You have to love life to have life, and you need to have life to love life

Choose the least important day in your life. It will be important enough.

We live in what is, but we find a thousand ways not to face it. Great theater strengthens our faculty to face it.

Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don't talk in English and don't even want to.

For what human ill does dawn not seem to be alternative?

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 very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living.

Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

The silence of the three of them had made a little kernel of sense in a world of boasting, self-excuse and rhetoric.

It's when you're safe at home that you wish you were having an adventure. When you're having an adventure you wish you were safe at home.

You've got to love life to have life, and you've got to have life to love life.

We all know more than we know we know.

Wherever you come near the human race there's layers and layers of nonsense.

Once in a thousand times, it's interesting.