Thornton Wilder Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• 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, Heartbreak, Dog

  Thornton Wilder (2009). “The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Other Novels, 1926-1948”

  16 Copy quote

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

  Thornton Wilder

  Hope, Attitude, Fear

  Thornton Wilder (1987). “The ides of March”, HarperCollins

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Thornton Wilder

  Time, Moving, Passion

  Thornton Wilder (1966). “Three Plays: Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Matchmaker”

  19 Copy quote

• A good writer preserves an air of freedom in his prose, so that the reader won't know how a story will end - even if he's reading a history book.

  Thornton Wilder

  Book, Reading, Air

  7 Copy quote

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

  Thornton Wilder

  Truth, Honesty, Different

  Thornton Wilder (1966). “Three Plays: Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Matchmaker”

  71 Copy quote

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

  Thornton Wilder

  Men, Bird, Superstitions

  Thornton Wilder (2014). “The Ides of March: A Novel”, p.5, Harper Collins

  9 Copy quote

• An incinerator is a writer's best friend.

  Thornton Wilder

  Friendship

  13 Copy quote

• 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.

  Thornton Wilder

  Home, Adventure, Wish

  Thornton Wilder (2016). “Our Town and Other Plays”, p.293, Penguin UK

  56 Copy quote

• 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. There may be two equally good, equally gifted, equally beautiful, but theremay never be two that love one another equally well.

  Thornton Wilder

  Beautiful, Two, Perfect

  9 Copy quote

• the whole purport of literature...is the notation of the heart. Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world.

  Thornton Wilder

  Heart, Style, Literature

  8 Copy quote

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

  Thornton Wilder

  Encouraging, Money, Humorous

  "The Matchmaker". Play by Thornton Wilder. Act 4, 1957.

  18 Copy quote

• There are the stars--doing their old, old crisscross journeys in the sky. Scholars haven't settled the matter yet, but they seem to think there are no living beings out there. Just chalk... or fire. Only this one is straining away, straining away all the time to make something of itself. Strain's so bad that every sixteen hours everybody lies down and gets a rest.

  Thornton Wilder

  Stars, Lying, Journey

  Thornton Wilder (2007). “Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays & Writings on Theater”

  4 Copy quote

• But there comes a time in everybody's life when he must decide whether he'll live among human beings or nota fool among fools or a fool alone.

  Thornton Wilder

  Time, Fool, Humans

  1954 The Matchmaker, act 4.

  6 Copy quote

• All excellence is equally difficult.

  Thornton Wilder

  Excellence, Difficult

  Thornton Wilder, Jackson R. Bryer (1992). “Conversations with Thornton Wilder”, p.77, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  12 Copy quote

• [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.

  Thornton Wilder

  Dream, Art, Routine

  Thornton Wilder (1961). “Twayne's United States Authors Series”

  9 Copy quote

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

  Thornton Wilder

  Thinking About You, Employed, Whole

  Thornton Wilder (2007). “Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays & Writings on Theater”

  10 Copy quote

• true influence over another comes not from a moments eloquence nor from any happily chosen word, but from the accumulation of a lifetime's thoughts stored up in the eyes...the secret smile in the eyes of a friend

  Thornton Wilder

  Eye, Secret, Influence

  8 Copy quote

• You swore you loved me, and laughed and warned me that you would not love me forever. I did not hear you. You were speaking in a language I did not understand. Never, never, I can conceive of a love which is able to foresee its own termination. Love is its own eternity. Love is in every moment of its being: all time. It is the only glimpse we are permitted of what eternity is. So I did not hear you. The words were nonsense.

  Thornton Wilder

  Love, Forever, Age

  Thornton Wilder (2009). “The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Other Novels, 1926-1948”

  5 Copy quote

• The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs.

  Thornton Wilder

  Ideas, Tides, Cliffs

  Thornton Wilder (2014). “The Bridge of San Luis Rey: A Novel”, p.12, Harper Collins

  4 Copy quote

• Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.

  Thornton Wilder

  Existence, Live By, Plans

  Thornton Wilder (2014). “The Bridge of San Luis Rey: A Novel”, p.8, Harper Collins

  5 Copy quote

• Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.

  Thornton Wilder

  Literature, Platitudes, Orchestration

  In Time 12 Jan. 1953

  7 Copy quote

• Doctors are mostly impostors. The older a doctor is and the more venerated he is, the more he must pretend to know everything. Of course, they grow worse with time. Always look for a doctor who is hated by the best doctors. Always seek out a bright young doctor before he comes down with nonsense.

  Thornton Wilder

  Doctors, Looks, Nonsense

  unknown

  4 Copy quote

• Comparisons of one's lot with others' teaches us nothing and enfeebles the will.

  Thornton Wilder

  Teach, Comparison

  Thornton Wilder, Jackson R. Bryer (1992). “Conversations with Thornton Wilder”, p.69, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  5 Copy quote

• How terrifying and glorious the role of man if, indeed, without guidance and without consolation he must create from his own vitals the meaning for his existence and write the rules whereby he lives.

  Thornton Wilder

  Writing, Men, Roles

  Thornton Wilder (1987). “The ides of March”, HarperCollins

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Thornton Wilder

  Coffee, Sleep, Sunflower

  Thornton Wilder (1966). “Three Plays: Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Matchmaker”

  16 Copy quote

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