Thornton Wilder Quotes
"The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Decisions, Freedom)
"My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Advice)
"Ninety-nine per cent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: People, Danger, Fools, Rest, World)
"Pride, avarice, and envy are in every home."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Home, Envy, Pride)
"Providence has nothing good or high in store for one who does not resolutely aim at something high or good. A purpose is the eternal condition of success."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Success, Purpose, Nothing, Providence)
"Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Work, Day, Hearing, Reading)
"The best thing about animals is that they don't talk much."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Animals, Talk)
"The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Winning, Exploration, Future, Language, Manipulation, Will)
"The theatre is supremely fitted to say: 'Behold! These things are.' Yet most dramatists employ it to say: 'This moral truth can be learned from beholding this action.'"
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Truth, Action, Theatre)
"There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Love, Survival, Land, Living, Meaning)
"There's nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Nothing, World)
"Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipients of confidences."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Self)
"Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Love, Yesterday)
"We do not choose the day of our birth nor may we choose the day of our death, yet choice is the sovereign faculty of the mind."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Death, Choice, Day, May, Mind)
"Marriage is a bribe to make the housekeeper think she's a householder."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Marriage)
"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."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Home, Adventure)
"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Moments)
"But there comes a moment in everybody's life when he must decide whether he'll live among the human beings or not - a fool among fools or a fool alone."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Life, Fool, Fools)
"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."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Action)
"Nature reserves the right to inflict upon her children the most terrifying jests."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Nature, Children, Right)
"An incinerator is a writer's best friend."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Friend, Writer)
"Many plays - certainly mine - are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Actors)
"Every good thing in the world stands on the razor-edge of danger."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Danger, World)
"For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation?"
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Dawn)
"Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Faith, Hope, Nothing)
"I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Childhood, Gifts)
"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."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Danger, World)
"Man is not an end but a beginning. We are at the beginning of the second week. We are children of the eighth day."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Beginning, Children, Day, End, Man)
"If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Actor)
"In advertising, not to be different is virtual suicide."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Advertising, Suicide)
"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
(Related: Time, Appearance, Eye)
"It is very necessary to have markers of beauty left in a world seemingly bent on making the most evil ugliness."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Beauty, Evil, Ugliness, World)
"Literature is the orchestration of platitudes."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Literature)
"Love is an energy which exists of itself. It is its own value."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Love, Energy, Value)
"A play visibly represents pure existing."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Play)
"I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Love)