Thornton Wilder's Quotes

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.

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

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

In advertising, not to be different is virtual suicide.

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

Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.

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

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

Pride, avarice, and envy are in every home.

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.

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.

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.'

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.