Thornton Wilder quotes - page 4

EMILY: "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it... every, every minute?" STAGE MANAGER: "No. Saints and poets maybe... they do some. (Thornton Wilder)
That's what it was 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. View quote
Thornton Wilder
I realize that 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. View quote
Thornton Wilder
There is no happiness save in understanding the whole. View quote
Thornton Wilder
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. View quote
Thornton Wilder
Soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for 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. View quote
Thornton Wilder
Where there is an unknowable, there is a promise. View quote
Thornton Wilder
Enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate -- that's my philosophy. View quote
Thornton Wilder
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. View quote
Thornton Wilder
A living is made, Mr. Kemper, by selling something that everybody needs at least once a year. Yes, sir And a million is made by producing something that everybody needs every day. You artists produce something that nobody needs at any time. View quote
Thornton Wilder
I rose by sheer military ability to the rank of corporal. (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. View quote
Thornton Wilder
I was an old man when I was 12 and now I am an old man, AND IT'S SPLENDID. View quote
Thornton Wilder