Thornton Wilder quotes

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)
Ninety-nine per cent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion. View quote
Thornton Wilder
Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day. View quote
Thornton Wilder
Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Thornton Wilder
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. View quote
Thornton Wilder
Literature is the orchestration of platitudes. View quote
Thornton Wilder
Love is an energy which exists of itself. It is its own value. View quote
Thornton Wilder
I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island. View quote
Thornton Wilder
Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous. (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. View quote
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. View quote
Thornton Wilder
Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipients of confidences. View quote
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. View quote
Thornton Wilder
Marriage is a bribe to make the housekeeper think she's a householder. View quote
Thornton Wilder
Many plays - certainly mine - are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them. View quote
Thornton Wilder
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.' View quote
Thornton Wilder
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. View quote
Thornton Wilder
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. View quote
Thornton Wilder
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. (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. View quote
Thornton Wilder
We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. View quote
Thornton Wilder
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. View quote
Thornton Wilder
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. View quote
Thornton Wilder