That's the advantage of having lived sixty-five years. You don't feel the need to be impatient any longer.

— Thornton Wilder

The art of biography is more difficult than is generally supposed.

— Thornton Wilder

The best thing about animals is that they don't talk much.

— Thornton Wilder

The 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

The 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

The 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 error

— Thornton Wilder

The future is the most expensive luxury in the world.

— Thornton Wilder

The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.

— Thornton Wilder

The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs.

— Thornton Wilder

The Marques would even have been astonished to learn that her letters were very good, for such authors live always in the noble weather of their own minds and those productions which seem remarkable to us are little better than a day's routine to them.

— Thornton Wilder