Thornton Wilder
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilderwas 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth17 April 1897
CityMadison, WI
CountryUnited States of America
teach comparison
Comparisons of one's lot with others' teaches us nothing and enfeebles the will.
doctors looks nonsense
Doctors are mostly impostors. The older a doctor is and the more venerated he is, the more he must pretend to know everything. Of course, they grow worse with time. Always look for a doctor who is hated by the best doctors. Always seek out a bright young doctor before he comes down with nonsense.
unique unbroken succession
Every person who has ever lived has lived an unbroken succession of unique occasions.
play actors blank
Characterization in a play is like a blank check which the dramatist accords to the actor for him to fill in.
lying conventions falsehood
A convention is an agreed-upon falsehood, a permitted lie.
public-good
Leadership is for those who love the public good and are endowed and trained to administer it.
talking perspective people
Everybody's talking about people breaking into houses but there are more people in the world who want to break out of houses.
friday july bridges
On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.
drama real eye
The unencumbered stage encourages the truth operative in everyone. The less seen, the more heard. The eye is the enemy of the ear in real drama.
money differences world
The difference between a little money and no money at all is enormous-and can shatter the world. And the difference between a little money and an enormous amount of money is very slight-and that, also, can shatter the world.
years people gazing
A dramatist is one who from his earliest years has found that sheer gazing at the shocks and counter-shocks among people is quite sufficiently engrossing without having to encase it in comment.
lying judging telling-the-truth
I am my own judge of what truths I shall tell. The truth can do just as much harm as a lie.
night sky singing
Throughout the hours of the night, though there had been few to hear it, the whole sky had been loud with the singing of these constellations.
existence plans live-by
Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.