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Thornton Wilder Quotes

1897–1975 United States

Thornton Niven Wilder (17 April 1897 – 7 December 1975) was a Pulitzer prize winning American author and playwright.

United States
Academics
Novelists
Playwrights

Also known as: Wilder, Thornton

Random Thornton Wilder quote

46 quotes

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

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

The Eighth Day (1967)

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

The Matchmaker (1954)

Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927)

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

The Skin of Our Teeth (1942)

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

The Eighth Day (1967)

I hate this play and every word in it.

The Skin of Our Teeth (1942)

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.

Writers at Work interview (1958)

Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927)

I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize.

Our Town (1938)

The planting of trees is the least self-centered of all that we do. It is a purer act of faith than the procreation of children.

The Eighth Day (1967)

Imagination draws on memory. Memory and imagination combined can stage a Servants' Ball or even write a book, if that's what they want to do.

Theophilus North (1973)

Nurse one vice in your bosom. Give it the attention it deserves and let your virtues spring up modestly around it. Then you'll have the miser who's no liar; and the drunkard who's the benefactor of the whole city.

The Matchmaker (1954)

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.

The Eighth Day (1967)

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

The Eighth Day (1967)

The difference between a little money and no money at all is enormous...and the difference between a little money and an enormous amount of money is very slight.

The Matchmaker (1954)

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."

Writers at Work interview (1958)

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.

Writers at Work interview (1958)

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.

Writers at Work interview (1958)

Winning children (who appear so guileless) are children who have discovered how effective charm and modesty and a delicately calculated spontaneity are in winning what they want.

Writers at Work interview (1958)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Thornton Wilder (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.