Thornton Wilder Quotes

Never turn your back on reality. It surrounds you.

That's what I mean by radical truth. I mean accepting reality.

I believe in facing reality. But only because I don't like turning my back on it.

You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.

Better to know the quick pain of truth than the ongoing pain of a long-held false hope.

I think that in a general sense, the idea of getting comfortable with the truth in life is uncomfortable.

It is the opposite of ignorance—it is intellectual honesty: to be willing to accept reality and to call things what they are even when it is hard.

Sometimes it seems like if you open up the door to reality and invite it in, it will just come flowing.

If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business.

One and all have to face reality now.

Better to accept the wretched truth than struggle, twisting to make a wish a reality.

You do not have to love what is going on in your life, but you must accept that it, whatever it is, is going on. As long as you do not accept reality, you are powerless to define the role you will play.

Trying to get people to face reality and see the world the way it really is is an absolutely critical aspect of leadership, in my view.

I avoided reality for most of my life. But once you deal with it, it's kind of cool.

Facing facts is always empowering.

We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.

Sometimes you have to look reality in the eye, and deny it.

It takes a long time to realize a situation is for real, and then you finally face it.

It's always better to face the truth, no matter how uncomfortable, than to continue coddling a lie.

I think we too often go soft in trying to spare people the agony of confronting reality.

Your life is what you see in front of you. -An-mei

I do believe that reality is dreadful and that you are forced to choose it in the end or go crazy, but that it kills you.

The day is coming when even the most closed-minded ridiculers will have to face the truth.

nothing good ever comes out of denying the truth about our situation.

Reality, looked at steadily, is unbearable.