01UndatedThe knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs.Thornton Wilder / quote ↗
02UndatedWe can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.Thornton Wilder / quote ↗
03UndatedThere is not a single untruth, no -but after ten lines Truth shrieks, she runs distraught and disheveled through her temple's corridors; she does not know herself. 'I can endure lies,' she cries. 'I cannot survive this stifling verisimilitudeThornton Wilder / quote ↗
05UndatedIt required all his delicate Epicurean education to prevent his doing something about it; he had to repeat over to himself his favorite notions: that the injustice and unhappiness in the world is a constant; that the theory of progress is a delusion; that the poor, never having known happiness, are insensible to misfortune. Like all the rich he could not bring himself to believe that the poor (look at their houses, look at their clothes) could really suffer. Like all the cultivated he believed that only the widely read could be said to know that they were unhappy.Thornton Wilder / quote ↗
06UndatedEither we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.Thornton Wilder / quote ↗
07UndatedThe type of the Inevitable is death. I remember well that in my youth I believed that I was certainly exempt from its operation. First when my daughter died, next when you were wounded, I knew that I was mortal; and now I regard those years as wasted, as unproductive, in which I was not aware that my death was certain, nay, momently possible. I can now appraise at a glance those who have not yet foreseen their death. I know them for the children they are. They think that by evading its contemplation they are enhancing the savor of life. The reverse is true: only those who have grasped their non-being are capable of praising the sunlight.Thornton Wilder / quote ↗
08UndatedIf you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be goodThornton Wilder / quote ↗
09UndatedIt was full of wounding remarks rather brilliantly said, perhaps said for the sheer virtuosity of giving pain neatly. Each of its phrases found its way through the eyes of the Marquesa, then, carefully wrapped in understanding and forgiveness, it sank into her heart.Thornton Wilder / quote ↗
10UndatedLet us at least say of religion that it means that every part of the body is infused with mind, not that the mind is overwhelmed and drowned in body. For the principal attribute of the Gods, without or within us, is mind.Thornton Wilder / quote ↗
11UndatedLove as education is one of the great powers of the world, but it hangs in a delicate suspension; it achieves its harmony as seldom as does love by the senses. Frustrated, it creates even greater havoc, for like all love it is a madness.Thornton Wilder / quote ↗
12UndatedPeople are meant to go through life two by two. ’Tain’t natural to be lonesome.Thornton Wilder / quote ↗
13UndatedYes, now you know. Now you know! That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those...of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. Now you know — that's the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness.Thornton Wilder / quote ↗
15UndatedThe central movement of the mind is the desire for unrestricted liberty and (...) this movement is invariably accompanied by its opposite, a dread of the consequences of liberty.Thornton Wilder / quote ↗
16UndatedLeadership is for those who love the public good and are endowed and trained to administer it.Thornton Wilder / quote ↗
17Undatedthe condition of leadership adds new degrees of solitariness to the basic solitude of mankind. Every order that we issue increases the extent to which we are alone, and every show of deference which is extended to us separates us from our fellows.Thornton Wilder / quote ↗
18UndatedAll of us have failed. One wishes to be punished. One is willing to assume all kinds of penance, but do you know, my daughter, that in love -- I scarcely dare say it -- but in love our very mistakes don't seem to be able to last long?Thornton Wilder / quote ↗
19UndatedGood-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corners... Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking... and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths...and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.Thornton Wilder / quote ↗
20UndatedThis assumption that she need look for no more devotion now that her beauty had passed proceeded from the fact that 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 through a long servitude, through its own self-hatred, through mockery, through 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.Thornton Wilder / quote ↗
21UndatedShe did not suspect that the Abbess was even there hovering about the house, herself estimating the stresses and watching for the moment when a burden harms and not strengthens.Thornton Wilder / quote ↗
22UndatedThe first and last schoolmaster of life is living and committing oneself unreservedly and dangerously to living; to men who know this an Aristotle and a Plato have much to say; but those who have imposed cautions on themselves and petrified themselves in a system of ideas, them the masters themselves will lead into errorThornton Wilder / quote ↗
23UndatedSo - people a thousand years from now...This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying.Thornton Wilder / quote ↗
24UndatedOnly it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don't talk in English and don't even want to.Thornton Wilder / quote ↗
