Thornton Wilder Quotes

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

I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.

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

There is nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.

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

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

Art is not only the desire to tell one's secret; it is the desire to tell it and hide it at the same time.

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

Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it -- every, every minute?

There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

Enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate.

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

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

The stuff of which masterpieces are made drifts about the world waiting to be clothed in words.

A play visibly represents pure existing.

EMILY: "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?" STAGE MANAGER: "No. Saints and poets maybe...they do some.

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

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

Life is a fatal adventure. It can only have one end. So why not make it as far-ranging and free as possible.

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

There is no drunkenness equal to that of remembering whispered words in the night.

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.

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

Faith is a never-ending pool of clarity, reaching far beyond the margins of consciousness. We all know more than we know we know.

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.

A sense of humor judges one's actions and the actions of others from a wider reference. It pardons shortcomings, it consoles failure.

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.

Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow.

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

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

An incinerator is a writer's best friend.

There is no need for me to curse you -the murderer survives the victim only to learn that it was himself that he longed to be rid of. Hatred is self-hatred.

Choose the least important day in your life. It will be important enough.

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.

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

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.

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms.

All excellence is equally difficult.

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.

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.

Where there is an unknowable, there is a promise.

I have inherited this burden of superstition and nonsense. I govern innumerable men but must acknowledge that I am governed by birds and thunderclaps

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

Every person who has ever lived has lived an unbroken succession of unique occasions.

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

Being employed is like being loved: you know that somebody's thinking about you the whole time.

In advertising, not to be different is virtual suicide.

[Camila] was quite incapable of establishing any harmony between the claims of her art, of her appetites, or her dreams, and of her crowded daily routine. Each of these was a world in itself.

The unencumbered stage encourages the truth operative in everyone. The less seen, the more heard. The eye is the enemy of the ear in real drama.

Characterization in a play is like a blank check which the dramatist accords to the actor for him to fill in.