THORNTON WILDER

Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.

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

Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.

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.

Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.

There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way.

The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose.

My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate.

It is only in appearance that time is a river. It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves.

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

Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipients of confidences.

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.

Many plays - certainly mine - are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.

In advertising, not to be different is virtual suicide.

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

Every good thing in the world stands on the razor-edge of danger.

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

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.

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

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.

An incinerator is a writer's best friend.

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.