Quotes from Thornton Wilder

children are a thing only a parent can stand

the master of the house don't pinch decent, self-respecting girls when he meets them in a dark corridor. I mention no names and make no charges.

A man looks pretty small at a wedding

Y]ou are a puzzle to me and if I could solve that puzzle I could solve the puzzle of America.

Faith founded schools; it is not dependent on them. A high authority has told us that we are more likely to find faith in an old woman on her knees scrubbing the floors of a public building than in a bishop on his throne.

America exists to solve problems. America is the solution to the problem

Emily: But just for a moment now we're all together. Mama, just for a moment we're all happy. Let's really look at one another... I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another.

where do we go for experience? How do we trust

would always advise any young writer for the theater to do everything—to adapt plays, to translate plays, to hang around theaters, to paint scenery, to become an actor. . . . There's a bottomless pit in the acquisition of how to tell an imagined story to listeners and viewers.

Life affords no second chances," he thought. "Is this what growing older is—seeing always more clearly the things we failed to see?

Under all that sunny generosity of Wilder's, who's really there? What's under that mask? Is there a mask? Theater is the place of masks. Do the three

That men aren't naturally good; but girls are.

Life is a series of disappointments, Mr. Tolland. Life is a series of promises that come to nothing.

can remember when a dog could go to sleep all day in the middle of Main Street and nothing come along to disturb him.

on the brink of war and then tumbling into it. The

That mask of Wilder's

Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous. The defeat of hope leads not to despair, but to resignation. The resignation of those who have had a grasp of hope retains hope's power.

Is there no one in town aware of social injustice and industrial inequality?

War's a pleasure—do you hear me?—War's a pleasure compared to what faces us now: trying to build up a peacetime with you in the middle of it.

It was Virgil's country and there was a wind that seemed to rise from the fields and descend upon us in a long Virgilian sigh, for the land that has inspired sentiment in the poet ultimately receives its sentiment from him.

A man can produce fortitude from his own vitals, but the true food of valor is example.

Wir kommen aus einer Welt, in der wir unglaubliche Maßstäbe der Vollkommenheit gekannt haben, und erinnern uns deutlich der Schönheiten, die wir nie festzuhalten vermochten, und kehren wieder in jene Welt zurück.

Puoi dirti vivo solo nei momenti in cui il tuo cuore vede i tesori che possiedi.

It was not necessary to explain that nothing escaped the eyes of Coaltown except the truth.)