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
It is very necessary to have markers of beauty left in a world seemingly bent on making the most evil ugliness.
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
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
Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipients of confidences.
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
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
Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.
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
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
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 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
There's nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.
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
Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.
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