An incinerator is a writer's best friend.
- Thornton Wilder Quote

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.
- Thornton Wilder Quote

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

For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation?
- Thornton Wilder Quote

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.
- Thornton Wilder Quote

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.
- Thornton Wilder Quote

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent.
- Thornton Wilder Quote

In advertising, not to be different is virtual suicide.
- Thornton Wilder Quote

It is very necessary to have markers of beauty left in a world seemingly bent on making the most evil ugliness.
- Thornton Wilder Quote

Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.
- Thornton Wilder Quote

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 Quote

Many plays - certainly mine - are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.
- Thornton Wilder Quote

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

Marriage is a bribe to make the housekeeper think she's a householder.
- Thornton Wilder Quote

My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy the ice cream while it's on your plate.
- Thornton Wilder Quote

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.
- Thornton Wilder Quote

Nature reserves the right to inflict upon her children the most terrifying jests.
- Thornton Wilder Quote

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 Quote

Providence has nothing good or high in store for one who does not resolutely aim at something high or good. A purpose is the eternal condition of success.
- Thornton Wilder Quote

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

The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way.
- Thornton Wilder Quote

The theatre is supremely fitted to say: 'Behold! These things are.' Yet most dramatists employ it to say: 'This moral truth can be learned from beholding this action.'
- Thornton Wilder Quote

There's nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.
- Thornton Wilder Quote

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

We do not choose the day of our birth nor may we choose the day of our death, yet choice is the sovereign faculty of the mind.
- Thornton Wilder Quote

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.
- Thornton Wilder Quote