Thornton Wilder Quotes (54 Quotes)

I was an old man when I was 12 and now I am an old man, AND IT'S SPLENDID.

Every writer is necessarily a critic -- that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg -- nine-tenths of him is under water.

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.

Winning children (who appear so guileless) are children who have discovered how effective charm and modesty and a delicately calculated spontaneity are in winning what they want.

A sense of humor judges one's actions and the actions of others from a wider reference . . . and finds them incongruous. It dampens enthusiasm it mocks hope it pardons shortcomings it consoles failure. It recommends moderation.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose.

Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.

Nature reserves the right to inflict upon her children the most terrifying jests.

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

And we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead,

In advertising, not to be different is virtual suicide.

And the sign that something's wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home And the sign that something's wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventure.

An incinerator is a writer's best friend.

Life is an unbroken succession of false situations.

The test of an adventure is that when you're in the middle of it, you say to yourself, Oh, now I've got myself into an awful mess I wish I were sitting quietly at home.

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

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.

Every good thing in the world stands on the razor-edge of danger.

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.

Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It's your combination sinners --your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards --who dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute.

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

Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.

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

Pride, avarice, and envy are in every home.

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

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.

There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

Many plays - certainly mine - are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.

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

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

There's nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.

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.

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.

I've never forgotten for long at a time that living is struggle. 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 -- whether it's a field, or a home, or a country.

I do borrow from other writers, shamelessly I can only say in my defense, like the woman brought before the judge on a charge of kleptomania, I do steal, but, your Honor, only from the very best stores.

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.'

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

One of the dangers of the American artist is that he finds himself almost exclusively thrown in with persons more or less in the arts. He lives among them, eats among them, quarrels with them, marries them.

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.

When God loves a creature he wants the creature to know the highest happiness and the deepest misery He wants him to know all that being alive can bring. That is his best gift. There is no happiness save in understanding the whole.

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

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

A play visibly represents pure existing.

Enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate -- that's my philosophy.

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