Thornton Wilder Quotes

What is human is immortal!

The only thing that is real is the being in you that is going to die.

I've been thinking about forever

You have to know the reality and the reality is that we are eternal.

Not all of me shall die.

Many times man lives and dies between his two eternities: that of race and that of Soul... A brief parting from those dear is the worst man has to fear... Though grave diggers' toil is long... They but thrust their buried men back in the human mind again.

Time is the life of the soul.

Finding myself to exist in the world, I believe I shall, in some shape or other, always exist.

Things were here before you and will be here after you're gone. The geographic features, especially, give you a sense of your own place in the world and in time.

That which comes and goes, rises and sets, is born and dies is the ego. That which always abides, never changes, and is devoid of qualities is the Self.

I shall not altogether die.

Once you're alive, you can't ever be dead.

A word I want to see written on my grave: I am alive like you, and I am standing beside you. Close your eyes and look around, you will see me in front of you.

You are permanent, but this life is not.

I want to go on living even after death!

What nature creates has eternity in it.

Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time.

Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions.

I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else.

The ruins of time build mansions in eternity.

What will happen to us?" I asked. "There will always be us," he answered.

Nothing is old, nothing is new, save the light of grace underneath which beats a human heart.

Bodies come and go, but the soul does not change.