Thornton Wilder Quotes

I want you to try and remember what it was like to have been very young.And particularly the days wh...

The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.

For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation?

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

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

If a man has no vices he's in great danger of making vices about his virtues and there's a spectac...

Pride avarice and envy are in every home.

Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.

A play visibly represents pure existing.

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

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

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

Comparisons of one's lot with others' teaches us nothing and enfeebles the will.

And at once he sacrificed everything to it, if it can be said we ever sacrifice anything save what w...

Many plays certainly mine are like blank cheques. The actors and directors put their own signature...

The unencumbered stage encourages the truth operative in everyone. The less seen the more heard. Th...

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

I not only bow to the inevitable I am fortified by it.

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

For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation.

When God loves a creature he wants the creature to know the highest happiness and the deepest misery...

Nurse one vice in your bosom. Give it the attention it deserves and let your virtues spring up modes...

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

I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of...

We live in what is but we find 1 000 ways not to face it. Great theatre strengthens our faculty to ...

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

A sense of humor judges one's actions and the actions of others from a wider reference ... it pardon...

If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good

Where there is an unknowable there is a promise.

Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It's your combination sinners - your lecherous liars ...

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

That's the advantage of having lived sixty-five years. You don't feel the need to be impatient any l...

The future is the most expensive luxury in the world.

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

So - people a thousand years from now...This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marryi...

Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don'...

Look at that moon. Potato weather for sure.

People are meant to go through life two by two. ’Tain’t natural to be lonesome.

I can't look at everything hard enough!

Yes, now you know. Now you know! That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignoran...

Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corners... Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking... an...

Everybody has a right to their own troubles.

Emily: Oh, Mama, look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, fourteen years have gone b...

Her religious beliefs went first, for all she could ask of a god, or of immortality, was the gift of...

She resembled the swallow in the fable who once every thousand years transferred a grain of wheat, i...

It required all his delicate Epicurean education to prevent his doing something about it; he had to ...

[Dona Maria] saw that the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-g...

[Camila] was quite incapable of establishing any harmony between the claims of her art, of her appet...

The art of biography is more difficult than is generally supposed.

All of us have failed. One wishes to be punished. One is willing to assume all kinds of penance, but...

It was full of wounding remarks rather brilliantly said, perhaps said for the sheer virtuosity of gi...

She did not suspect that the Abbess was even there hovering about the house, herself estimating the ...

But such occasions of excellence became less and less frequent. As her technique became sounder, [he...

Perhaps she would learn in time to permit both her daughter and her gods to govern their own affairs...

The Marquesa would even have been astonished to learn that her letters were very good, for such auth...

Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.

The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliff...

But while they continued staring into one another’s face waiting for the miracle of science the pain...

Throughout the hours of the night, though there had been few to hear it, the whole sky had been loud...

This assumption that she need look for no more devotion now that her beauty had passed proceeded fro...

the condition of leadership adds new degrees of solitariness to the basic solitude of mankind. Every...

Let us at least say of religion that it means that every part of the body is infused with mind, not ...

There is no need for me to curse you -the murderer survives the victim only to learn that it was him...

The mind of Caesar. It is the reverse of most men's. It rejoices in committing itself. To us arrive ...

The central movement of the mind is the desire for unrestricted liberty and (...) this movement is i...

You swore you loved me, and laughed and warned me that you would not love me forever. I did not hear...

The type of the Inevitable is death. I remember well that in my youth I believed that I was certainl...

It is only dogs that never bite their masters.

The first and last schoolmaster of life is living and committing oneself unreservedly and dangerousl...

I have inherited this burden of superstition and nonsense. I govern innumerable men but must acknowl...

Love as education is one of the great powers of the world, but it hangs in a delicate suspension; it...

Leadership is for those who love the public good and are endowed and trained to administer it.

There is not a single untruth, no -but after ten lines Truth shrieks, she runs distraught and dishev...

Cesar is not a philosophical man. His life has been one long flight from reflection. At least he is ...

The marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she is a householder.