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Home
Authors
Thornton Wilder
American
Novelist
About the author
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.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#Will
#Language
#Future
#Winning
#Manipulation
#Exploration
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,
American
Novelist
#Action
#Truth
#Theatre
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,
American
Novelist
#Love
#Living
#Land
#Survival
#Meaning
There's nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#Nothing
#World
Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipients of confidences.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#Self
Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#Love
#Yesterday
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,
American
Novelist
#Death
#Day
#May
#Mind
#Choice
Marriage is a bribe to make the housekeeper think she's a householder.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#Marriage
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,
American
Novelist
#Home
#Adventure
We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#Moments
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,
American
Novelist
#Life
#Fool
#Fools
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,
American
Novelist
#Action
Nature reserves the right to inflict upon her children the most terrifying jests.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#Right
#Children
#Nature
An incinerator is a writer's best friend.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#Friend
#Writer
Many plays - certainly mine - are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#Actors
Every good thing in the world stands on the razor-edge of danger.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#World
#Danger
For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation?
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#Dawn
Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#Hope
#Nothing
#Faith
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,
American
Novelist
#Childhood
#Gifts
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.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#World
#Danger
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,
American
Novelist
#Children
#Day
#End
#Man
#Beginning
If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#Actor
In advertising, not to be different is virtual suicide.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#Suicide
#Advertising
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,
American
Novelist
#Time
#Eye
#Appearance
It is very necessary to have markers of beauty left in a world seemingly bent on making the most evil ugliness.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#World
#Evil
#Beauty
#Ugliness
Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#Literature
Love is an energy which exists of itself. It is its own value.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#Love
#Value
#Energy
A play visibly represents pure existing.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#Play
I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#Love
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.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#God
#Being
#Understanding
#Misery
#Happiness
The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#Freedom
#Decisions
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,
American
Novelist
#Advice
Ninety-nine per cent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#People
#World
#Rest
#Danger
#Fools
Pride, avarice, and envy are in every home.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#Home
#Pride
#Envy
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,
American
Novelist
#Success
#Nothing
#Purpose
#Providence
Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#Work
#Day
#Reading
#Hearing
The best thing about animals is that they don't talk much.
Thornton Wilder,
American
Novelist
#Talk
#Animals