Quote

I am my own judge of what truths I shall tell. The truth can do just as much harm as a lie.

Thornton Wilder

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thornton Wilder
Age: 78 †
Born: 1897
Born: April 17
Died: 1975
Died: December 7
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Madison
Wisconsin
Thornton Niven Wilder
Tell
Truth
Much
Truths
Judge
Harm
Judging
Shall
Lying

More quotes by Thornton Wilder

Image
A dramatist is one who believes that the pure event, an action involving human beings, is more arresting than any comment that can be made upon it.
Thornton Wilder
Image
Winning children (who appear so guileless) are children who have discovered how effective charm and modesty and a delicately calculated spontaneity are in winning what they want.
Thornton Wilder
Image
That's the advantage of having lived sixty-five years. You don't feel the need to be impatient any longer.
Thornton Wilder
Image
Some say that we shall never know, and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer's day, and some say, to the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God.
Thornton Wilder
Image
Favors cease to be favors when there are conditions attached to them.
Thornton Wilder
Image
A man looks pretty small at a wedding, George. All those good women standing shoulder to shoulder, making sure that the knot's tied in a mighty public way.
Thornton Wilder
Image
A play visibly represents pure existing.
Thornton Wilder
Image
you have to love life to have life, and you need to have life to love life
Thornton Wilder
Image
I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts.
Thornton Wilder
Image
All that we know about those we have loved and lost is that they would wish us to remember them with a more intensified realization of their reality. What is essential does not die but clarifies. The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.
Thornton Wilder
Image
It is very necessary to have markers of beauty left in a world seemingly bent on making the most evil ugliness.
Thornton Wilder
Image
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.
Thornton Wilder
Image
Many plays - certainly mine - are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.
Thornton Wilder
Image
I think I write in order to discover on my shelf a new book that I would enjoy reading, or to see a new play that would engross me.
Thornton Wilder
Image
When you're at war, you think about a better life when you're at peace you think about a more comfortable one.
Thornton Wilder
Image
Love is an energy which exists of itself. It is its own value.
Thornton Wilder
Image
A dramatist is one who from his earliest years has found that sheer gazing at the shocks and counter-shocks among people is quite sufficiently engrossing without having to encase it in comment.
Thornton Wilder
Image
Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipients of confidences.
Thornton Wilder
Image
I have inherited this burden of superstition and nonsense. I govern innumerable men but must acknowledge that I am governed by birds and thunderclaps
Thornton Wilder
Image
What is essential does not die but clarifies.
Thornton Wilder