Thornton Wilder Quotes (91 quotes)
![]() | “Nurse one vice in your bosom. Give it the attention it deserves and let your virtues spring up modestly around it. Then you'll have the miser who's no liar; and the drunkard who's the benefactor of the whole city.” ―Thornton Wilder Source/Notes: Malachi, in Act 3 - The Matchmaker (1954) |
![]() | “Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anyone to realize you.... Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?” ―Thornton Wilder Source/Notes: Our Town (1938), Act 3 |
![]() | “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 Source/Notes: The Matchmaker (1954) |
![]() | “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 Source/Notes: Writers at Work interview (1958) |
![]() | “Many plays — certainly mine — are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.” ―Thornton Wilder Source/Notes: The New York Mirror (13 July 1956) |
![]() | “A man looks pretty small at a wedding, George. All those good women standing shoulder to shoulder, making sure that the knot's tied in a mighty public way.” ―Thornton Wilder Source/Notes: Mr. Webb - Our Town (1938) |
![]() | “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.” ―Thornton Wilder Source/Notes: Writers at Work interview (1958) |
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Picture Source: Wikimedia Commons
Thornton Wilder
Born: April 17, 1897
Died: December 7, 1975 (aged 78)
Nationality: American
Occupation: Novelist, playwright
Bio: Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for the two plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth and a U.S. National Book Award for the novel The Eighth Day.
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“Argument almost always leaves behind a sore feeling in the heart of the one who has been worsted. By loving teaching, by Christ-like living, we are to win this people for our Lord. They do not understand what disinterested love and unselfishness mean: you are to go and live it amont them.”