Thornton Niven Wilder (1897–1975) was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes—for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for the two plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth—and a U.S. National Book Award for the novel The Eighth Day.
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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
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
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: Criticism, Critics
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
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, Writers, Writing
Everybody’s talking about people breaking into houses but there are more people in the world who want to break out of houses.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Perspective
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
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
I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Poetry
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
I not only bow to the inevitable; I am fortified by it.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Acceptance, Attitude
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
Favors cease to be favors when there are conditions attached to them.
—Thornton Wilder
For what human ill does dawn not seem to be alternative?
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Choice
Comparisons of one’s lot with others’ teaches us nothing and enfeebles the will.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Comparisons, Reality, Opportunities
I rose by sheer military ability to the rank of corporal.
—Thornton Wilder
That’s the advantage of having lived 65 years. You don’t feel the need to be impatient any longer.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Resilience, Patience
Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Hope
We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Gratitude
The unencumbered stage encourages the truth operative in everyone. The less seen, the more heard. The eye is the enemy of the ear in real drama.
—Thornton Wilder
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: Children, Youth, Unhappiness, Childhood
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: Conversation, Speech
Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipients of confidences.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Confidence
Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she’s a householder.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Marriage
We live in what is, but we find 1,000 ways not to face it. Great theatre strengthens our faculty to face it.
—Thornton Wilder
The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Choice
The best part of married life is the fights. The rests is merely so.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Marriage
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.”
—Thornton Wilder
Where there is an unknowable, there is a promise.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Ignorance, Promises
Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Reading
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
Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Literature, Books
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: Acceptance, Time Management, Carpe-diem, Value of Time, Happiness
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
Pride, avarice, and envy are in every home.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Pride
The future is the most expensive luxury in the world.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Tomorrow, The Future
Love is an energy which exists of itself. It is its own value.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: 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.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Discovery, Love, Romance, Meaning
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: Children, Faith
A play visibly represents pure existing.
—Thornton Wilder
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.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Philosophy, Advice, Gratitude
For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation?
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Morning
Money is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around encouraging young things to grow.
—Thornton Wilder
Topics: Money
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