If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good

— Thornton Wilder

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

I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for.

— Thornton Wilder

I not only bow to the inevitable I am fortified by it.

— Thornton Wilder

It is only dogs that never bite their masters.

— Thornton Wilder

It 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

It 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 Marques, then, carefully wrapped in understanding and forgiveness, it sank into her heart.

— Thornton Wilder

I want you to try and remember what it was like to have been very young. And particularly the days when you were first in love; when you were like a person sleepwalking, and you didn’t quite see the street you were in, and didn’t quite hear everything that was said to you. You’re just a little bit crazy. Will you remember that, please?

— Thornton Wilder

Leadership is for those who love the public good and are endowed and trained to administer it.

— Thornton Wilder

Let 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