Thornton Wilder Quotes about Children

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Without your wounds where would your power be? It is your melancholy that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men and women. The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on

Without your wounds where would your power be? It is your melancholy that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men and women. The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In Love’s service, only wounded soldiers can serve. Physician, draw back.

Thornton Wilder

Children, Heart, Angel

I didn't marry you because you were perfect. I didn't even marry you because I loved you. I married you because you gave me a promise. That promise made up for your faults. And the promise I gave you made up for mine. Two imperfect people got married and it was the promise that made the marriage. And when our children were growing up, it wasn't a house that protected them; and it wasn't our love that protected them--it was that promise.

Thornton Wilder

Marriage, Children, Growing Up

Nature reserves the right to inflict upon her children the most terrifying jests.

Thornton Wilder

Nature, Children, Scary

Thornton Wilder (2009). “The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Other Novels, 1926-1948”

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 though a long servitude, though its own self-hatred, though mockery, though 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

Loyalty, Dog, Children

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

Children, Winning, Want

Interview in "Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, First Series", edited by Malcolm Cowley, 1958.