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Quotes by Thornton Wilder

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
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.
– Thornton Wilder
An incinerator is a writer's best friend.
– Thornton Wilder
For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation?
– Thornton Wilder
Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.
– Thornton Wilder
I am not interested in the ephemeral-such subjects as the adulteries of dentists. I am interested in those things that repeat and repeat and repeat in the lives of the millions.
– Thornton Wilder
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
I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.
– Thornton Wilder
If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent.
– Thornton Wilder
In advertising, not to be different is virtual suicide.
– Thornton Wilder
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
It is very necessary to have markers of beauty left in a world seemingly bent on making the most evil ugliness.
– Thornton Wilder
Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.
– Thornton Wilder
Love is an energy which exists of itself. It is its own value.
– Thornton Wilder
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
Many plays-certainly mine-are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.
– Thornton Wilder
Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.
– Thornton Wilder
Marriage is a bribe to make the housekeeper think she's a householder.
– Thornton Wilder
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
Nature reserves the right to inflict upon her children the most terrifying jests.
– Thornton Wilder
On the stage it is always now; the personages are standing on that razor edge, between the past and the future, which is the essential character of conscious being; the words are rising to their lips in immediate spontaneity The theater is supremely fitted to say: Behold! These things are.
– Thornton Wilder
Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.
– Thornton Wilder
The best thing about animals is that they don't talk much.
– Thornton Wilder
The planting of trees is the least self-centered of all that we do. It is a purer act of faith than the procreation of children.
– Thornton Wilder
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
Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipients of confidences.
– Thornton Wilder
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
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.
– Thornton Wilder
Life is an unbroken succession of false situations.
– Thornton Wilder
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
The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose.
– Thornton Wilder
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
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
Pride, avarice, and envy are in every home.
– Thornton Wilder
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
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