Quotes from Thornton Wilder

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?

George Brush is my nameAmerica's my nationLuddington's my dwelling placeAnd Heaven's my destination.

On the stage it is always now.

There is nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.

The morning star always gets wonderful bright the minute before it has to go,—doesn't it?

I not only bow to the inevitable; I am fortified by it.

But listen, it's not finished: the United States of America; Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the Mind of God,—that's what it said on the envelope.

Love is an energy which exists of itself. It is its own value.

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.

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

Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

Marriage is a bribe to make the housekeeper think she's a householder.

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.

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.

Everybody's talking about people breaking into houses but there are more people in the world who want to break out of houses.

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

Nature reserves the right to inflict upon her children the most terrifying jests.

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.

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.

Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It's your combination sinners - your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards - who dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute.

Most everybody in the world climbs into their graves married.

A play visibly represents pure existing.

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

Life is an unbroken succession of false situations.