Quotes by Thornton Wilder

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

— Thornton Wilder

Love

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.

— Thornton Wilder

Life

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

— Thornton Wilder

Life

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

Wisdom

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

Happiness

In advertising, not to be different is virtual suicide.

— Thornton Wilder

Wisdom

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

— Thornton Wilder

Love

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

— Thornton Wilder

Love

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

Wisdom

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

Love

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

— Thornton Wilder

Courage

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

— Thornton Wilder

Wisdom

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

Life

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

— Thornton Wilder

Freedom

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

— Thornton Wilder

Love

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

— Thornton Wilder

Life

Nature reserves the right to inflict upon her children the most terrifying jests.

— Thornton Wilder

Wisdom

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

— Thornton Wilder

Success

Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipients of confidences.

— Thornton Wilder

Wisdom

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

Happiness

An incinerator is a writer's best friend.

— Thornton Wilder

Friendship

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

— Thornton Wilder

Life

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

— Thornton Wilder

Wisdom

Pride, avarice, and envy are in every home.

— Thornton Wilder

Wisdom