Thornton Wilder Quotes

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. - Thornton Wilder

Winning children (who appear so guileless) are children who have discovered how effective charm and modesty and a delicately calculated spontaneity are in winning what they want. - Thornton Wilder

Wherever you come near the human race there's layers and layers of nonsense. - Thornton Wilder

Where there is an unknowable, there is a promise. - Thornton Wilder

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. - Thornton Wilder

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

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

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

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

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

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