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
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.
love forever age
You swore you loved me, and laughed and warned me that you would not love me forever. I did not hear you. You were speaking in a language I did not understand. Never, never, I can conceive of a love which is able to foresee its own termination. Love is its own eternity. Love is in every moment of its being: all time. It is the only glimpse we are permitted of what eternity is. So I did not hear you. The words were nonsense.
heart style literature
the whole purport of literature...is the notation of the heart. Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world.
mind body bitter
Imprisonment of the body is bitter; imprisonment of the mind is worse
loyalty dog children
She had never realized any love save love as passion. Such love, though it expends itself in generosity and thoughtfulness, though it give birth to visions and to great poetry, remains among the sharpest expressions of self-interest. Not until it has passed though a long servitude, though its own self-hatred, though mockery, though great doubts, can it take its place among the loyalties. Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.
excellence technique sincerity
But such occasions of excellence became less and less frequent. As her technique became sounder, [her] sincerity became less necessary.
youth pale late
He regarded love as a sort of cruel malady through which the elect are required to pass in their late youth and from which they emerge, pale and wrung, but ready for the business of living.
moon weather potatoes
Look at that moon. Potato weather for sure.
self people drunk
[Dona Maria] saw that the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires.
love-life needs
you have to love life to have life, and you need to have life to love life
integrity liars two
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.
thinking-about-you employed knows
Being employed is like being loved: you know that somebody's thinking about you the whole time.