Thornton Wilder

Love 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.

The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose.

Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.

My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate.

Marriage is a bribe to make the housekeeper think she's a householder.

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.

Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.

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.

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

When God loves a creature he wants the creature to know the highest happiness and the deepest misery He wants him to know all that being alive can bring. That is his best gift. There is no happiness save in understanding the whole.

Love is an energy which exists of itself. It is its own value.

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

Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.

If a man has no vices he's in great danger of making vices about his virtues and there's a spectacle.

Nurse one vice in your bosom. Give it the attention it deserves and let your virtues spring up modestly around it. Then you'll have the miser who's no liar and the drunkard who's the benefactor of a whole city.

Pride avarice and envy are in every home.

The future is the most expensive luxury in the world.

Comparisons of one's lot with others' teaches us nothing and enfeebles the will.