Thornton Wilder quotes - page 2

People are meant to go through life two by two. 'Tain't natural to be lonesome. (Thornton Wilder)
Wherever you come near the human race there's layers and layers of nonsense. View quote
Thornton Wilder
A man looks pretty small at a wedding, George. All those good women standing shoulder to shoulder, making sure that the knot's tied in a mighty public way. View quote
Thornton Wilder
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. View quote
Thornton Wilder
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. View quote
Thornton Wilder
The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose. View quote
Thornton Wilder
Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow. View quote
Thornton Wilder
Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don't talk in English and don't even want to. View quote
Thornton Wilder
I am not interested in the ephemeral - such subjects as the adulteries of dentists. I am interested in those things that repeat and repeat and repeat in the lives of the millions. View quote
Thornton Wilder
A sense of humor judges one's actions and the actions of others from a wider reference . . . and finds them incongruous. It dampens enthusiasm it mocks hope it pardons shortcomings it consoles failure. It recommends moderation. View quote
Thornton Wilder
The best thing about animals is they don't talk much. (Thornton Wilder)
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. View quote
Thornton Wilder
I hold that we cannot be said to be aware of our minds save under responsibility. View quote
Thornton Wilder
But there comes a moment in everybody's life when he must decide whether he'll live among the human beings or not - a fool among fools or a fool alone. View quote
Thornton Wilder
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. View quote
Thornton Wilder
Being employed is like being loved: you know that somebody's thinking about you the whole time. View quote
Thornton Wilder
Some say that we shall never know, and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer's day, and some say, to the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God. View quote
Thornton Wilder
Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. View quote
Thornton Wilder
Life is an unbroken succession of false situations. View quote
Thornton Wilder
If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good. View quote
Thornton Wilder
Look at that moon. Potato weather for sure. (Thornton Wilder)
Choose the least important day in your life. It will be important enough. View quote
Thornton Wilder
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. View quote
Thornton Wilder
On the stage it is always now; the personages are standing on that razor edge, between the past and the future, which is the essential character of conscious being; the words are rising to their lips in immediate spontaneity ... The theater is supremely fitted to say: "Behold! These things are." View quote
Thornton Wilder
Love, though it expends itself in generosity and thoughtfulness, though it gives birth to visions and to great poetry, remains among the sharpest expressions of self-interest. Not until it has passed through a long servitude, through its own self-hatred, through mockery, through great doubts, can it take its place among the loyalties. View quote
Thornton Wilder