Thornton Wilder

Favors cease to be favors when there are conditions attached to them.

— Thornton Wilder

Being employed is like being loved: you know that somebody's thinking about you the whole time.

— Thornton Wilder

There's nothing like mixing with women to bring out all the foolishness in a man of sense.

— Thornton Wilder

Even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other.

— Thornton Wilder

“It is only dogs that never bite their masters.”

— Thornton Wilder

I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.

— Thornton Wilder

In advertising, not to be different is virtual suicide.

— Thornton Wilder

“Guile is the shield and spear of the oppressed.”

— 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…

— Thornton Wilder

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

“Once you have swung a pickax that will reveal the curve of a street four thousand years covered over which was once…

— Thornton Wilder

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.

— Thornton Wilder

The unencumbered stage encourages the truth operative in everyone. The less seen, the more heard. The eye is the enemy of the…

— Thornton Wilder

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

— Thornton Wilder

Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It's your combination sinners - your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards - who…

— Thornton Wilder

A dramatist is one who believes that the pure event, an action involving human beings, is more arresting than any comment that…

— Thornton Wilder

“If a man has no vices, he's in great danger of making vices out of his virtues, and there's a spectacle. We've…

— Thornton Wilder

A dramatist is one who from his earliest years has found that sheer gazing at the shocks and counter-shocks among people is…

— Thornton Wilder

“All of us have failed. One wishes to be punished. One is willing to assume all kinds of penance, but do you…

— Thornton Wilder

“One can go on saying for years that one doesn't listen to gossip, that the absent cannot defend themselves from slander, etc.,…

— Thornton Wilder

How terrifying and glorious the role of man if, indeed, without guidance and without consolation he must create from his own vitals…

— Thornton Wilder

“He respected the slight nervous shadow that crossed her face when he came too near her. But there arose out of this…

— Thornton Wilder

“Spiders draw just enough silk out of their bowels to catch those half-dozen flies they need to feed themselves and their loved…

— Thornton Wilder

“He gazed for an hour upon the great clouds of pearl that hang forever upon the horizon of that sea, and extracted…

— Thornton Wilder

There is no drunkenness equal to that of remembering whispered words in the night.

— Thornton Wilder

“In love's service, only the wounded soldier can serve.”

— Thornton Wilder

I was an old man when I was 12; and now I am an old man, AND IT'S SPLENDID!

— Thornton Wilder

Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.

— Thornton Wilder

“Henceforth letter-writing had to take the place of all the affection that could not be lived.”

— Thornton Wilder

Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?

— Thornton Wilder

If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good

— Thornton Wilder

Every good thing in the world stands on the razor-edge of danger.

— Thornton Wilder

“An American is insubmissive, lonely, self-educated, and polite.”

— Thornton Wilder

Leadership is for those who love the public good and are endowed and trained to administer it.

— Thornton Wilder

For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation?

— Thornton Wilder

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

— Thornton Wilder

The best thing about animals is that they don't talk much.

— Thornton Wilder

For what human ill does dawn not seem to be alternative?

— Thornton Wilder

The stuff of which masterpieces are made drifts about the world waiting to be clothed in words.

— Thornton Wilder

There's nothing like mixing with woman to bring out all the foolishness in a man of sense.

— Thornton Wilder