Quotes from Thornton Wilder

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent.

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

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

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

Pride avarice and envy are in every home.

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

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

A sense of humor judges one's actions and the actions of others from a wider reference. It pardons shortcomings, it consoles failure.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it -- every, every minute?

Enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate.

EMILY: "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?" STAGE MANAGER: "No. Saints and poets maybe...they do some.

Life is a fatal adventure. It can only have one end. So why not make it as far-ranging and free as possible.

Choose the least important day in your life. It will be important enough.

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

We live in what is, but we find a thousand ways not to face it. Great theater strengthens our faculty to face it.

But there comes a time in everybody's life when he must decide whether he'll live among human beings or nota fool among fools or a fool alone.

Life is an unbroken succession of false situations.

A dramatist is one who believes that the pure event, an action involving human beings, is more arresting than any comment that can be made upon it.