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.

We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being. -stage manager, in the play OUR TOWN

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

The test of an adventure is that when you're in the middle of it, you say to yourself "Oh now I've got myself into an awful mess; I wish I were sitting quietly at home. And the sign that something's wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventure.

I didn't marry you because you were perfect. I didn't even marry you because I loved you. I married you because you gave me a promise. That promise made up for your faults. And the promise I gave you made up for mine. Two imperfect people got married and it was the promise that made the marriage. And when our children were growing up, it wasn't a house that protected them; and it wasn't our love that protected them--it was that promise.

But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

All that we know about those we have loved and lost is that they would wish us to remember them with a more intensified realization of their reality. What is essential does not die but clarifies. The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.

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.

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

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

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.

Some say that we shall never know, and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer's day, and some say, to the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God.

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

A play visibly represents pure existing.

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

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

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

That’s what it was like to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those...of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. Now you know- that’s the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness. -Simon Stimson, OUR TOWN

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corners... Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking... and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths...and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

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

I want you to try and remember what it was like to have been very young. And particularly the days when you were first in love; when you were like a person sleepwalking, and you didn’t quite see the street you were in, and didn’t quite hear everything that was said to you. You’re just a little bit crazy. Will you remember that, please?

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.

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

An incinerator is a writer's best friend.

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

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.

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.

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

All excellence is equally difficult.

Without your wounds where would your power be? It is your melancholy that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men and women. The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In Love’s service, only wounded soldiers can serve. Physician, draw back.

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.

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