Thornton Wilder: Trending quotes

Thornton Wilder trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection
Thornton Wilder: 122 quotes11 likes

“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.”

Thornton Wilder book The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Source: The Bridge of San Luis Rey

“Look at that moon. Potato weather for sure.”

Thornton Wilder Our Town

Source: Our Town

“Wherever you come near the human race there's layers and layers of nonsense.”

Thornton Wilder Our Town

"Stage Manager"
Source: Our Town (1938)

“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 The Matchmaker

Malachi, in Act 3
The Matchmaker (1954)

“Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.”

Thornton Wilder

As quoted in "The Notation of the Heart" by Edmund Fuller, in The American Scholar Reader (1960) edited by Hiram Hayden and Betsy Saunders

“One of the dangers of the American artist is that he finds himself almost exclusively thrown in with persons more or less in the arts. He lives among them, eats among them, quarrels with them, marries them.”

Thornton Wilder

Writers at Work interview (1958)

“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.”

Thornton Wilder Our Town

"Mr. Webb"
Our Town (1938)

“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.”

Thornton Wilder book The Bridge of San Luis Rey

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927)

“I hold that we cannot be said to be aware of our minds save under responsibility.”

Thornton Wilder book The Ides of March

The Ides of March (1948), sec. VIII, item 977, p. 34 http://books.google.com/books?id=8IgRAAAAMAAJ&q=%22I+hold+that+we+cannot+be+said+to+be+aware+of+our+minds+save+under+responsibility%22&pg=PA34#v=onepage

“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.”

Thornton Wilder book The Eighth Day

The Eighth Day (1967)

“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

Antrobus, in Act 3
The Skin of Our Teeth (1942)

“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."”

Thornton Wilder

Writers at Work interview (1958)

“Ninety-nine per cent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.”

Thornton Wilder The Matchmaker

The Matchmaker (1954)

“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.”

Thornton Wilder

As quoted in "The Notation of the Heart" by Edmund Fuller, in The American Scholar Reader (1960) edited by Hiram Hayden and Betsy Saunders

“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

Writers at Work interview (1958)

“Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world.”

Thornton Wilder book The Bridge of San Luis Rey

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927)

“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 book The Eighth Day

The Eighth Day (1967)