Thornton Wilder
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilderwas an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes—for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for the two plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth — and a U.S. National Book Award for the novel The Eighth Day...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth17 April 1897
CityMadison, WI
CountryUnited States of America
cloud existence feelings ignorance mercy million move passion spend time waste
Yes. Now you know. Now you know. 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 if 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.
american-novelist marriage
Marriage is a bribe to make the housekeeper think she's a householder.
american-novelist animals best
The best thing about animals is that they don't talk much.
american-novelist
There's nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.
american-novelist among beings decide fools human life moment whether
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.
american-novelist excellent fought good stands
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.
american-novelist human
For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation?
interested lives repeat subjects
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.
youth pale late
He regarded love as a sort of cruel malady through which the elect are required to pass in their late youth and from which they emerge, pale and wrung, but ready for the business of living.
life ice dessert
Enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate.
order trying may
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
self quiet silent
Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipients of confidences.
men good-woman way
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.
mind body bitter
Imprisonment of the body is bitter; imprisonment of the mind is worse