Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was nursed by the closest attention to colloquial speech.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Speech, Conversation
Comparisons of one’s lot with others’ teaches us nothing and enfeebles the will.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Reality, Comparisons, Opportunities
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
Topics: Theater
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
Topics: Unhappiness, Childhood, Children, Youth
Many plays, certainly mine, are like blank cheques. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Theater
I’ve never forgotten for long at a time that living is struggle. 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—whether it’s a field, or a home, or a country.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Goodness
Money is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around encouraging young things to grow.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Money
The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Decision, Choice, Choices
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
Topics: Acting, Actors, Theater
I rose by sheer military ability to the rank of corporal.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: The Military
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.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Children
That’s the advantage of having lived 65 years. You don’t feel the need to be impatient any longer.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Patience, Resilience
The best thing about animals is that they don’t talk much.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Animals
A sense of humor judges one’s actions and the actions of others from a wider reference … it pardons shortcomings; it consoles failure. It recommends moderation.
—Thornton Wilder
Pride, avarice, and envy are in every home.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Pride
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
Topics: Time
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
Topics: Man, Mankind
It’s when you’re safe at home that you wish you were having an adventure. When you’re having an adventure you wish you were safe at home.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Conflict
We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Gratitude
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
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writing, Writers
A play visibly represents pure existing.
—Thornton Wilder
For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation?
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Morning
The comic spirit is given to us in order that we may analyze, weigh, and clarify things in us which nettle us, or which we are outgrowing, or trying to reshape.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Comedy
Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It’s your combination sinners—your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards—who dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Humor, Vice
The planting of trees is the least self-centered of all that we can do. It is a purer act of faith than the procreation of children.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Faith, Children
Where there is an unknowable, there is a promise.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Promises, Ignorance
The best part of married life is the fights. The rests is merely so.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Marriage
Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she’s a householder.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Marriage
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
Topics: Value of Time, Time Management, Acceptance, Carpe-diem, Happiness
Every writer is necessarily a critic—that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg—nine-tenths of him is under water.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Critics, Criticism
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- William Motter Inge American Playwright
- Tennessee Williams American Playwright
- Booth Tarkington American Novelist
- William Saroyan American Playwright, Novelist
- Langston Hughes American Poet, Writer
- Marsha Norman American Playwright
- Gore Vidal American Novelist
- Arthur Miller American Playwright
- Dorothy L. Sayers English Novelist, Playwright
- Dodie Smith British Novelist
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