Thornton Wilder Quotes

"When you're safe at home you wish you were having an adventure; when you're having an adventure you wish you were safe at home"

"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 wish"

"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"

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

"Marriage is a bribe to make the housekeeper think she's a householder."

"It is only in appearance that time is a river. It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves."

"Literature is the orchestration of platitudes."

"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."

"There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."

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

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

"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."

"Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous."

"Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipients of confidences."

"An incinerator is a writer's best friend."

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

"Man is not an end but a beginning. We are at the beginning of the second week. We are children of the eighth day."

"Love is an energy which exists of itself. It is its own value."

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

"A play visibly represents pure existing."