Willa Cather Quotes
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Prayers said by good people are always good prayers
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The pale, cold light of the winter sunset did not beautify - it was like the light of truth itself.
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Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening.
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Thea was still under the belief that public opinion could be placated; that if you clucked often enough, the hens would mistake you for one of themselves.
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There is something frank and joyous and young in the open face of the country. It gives itself ungrudgingly to the moods of the season, holding nothing back.
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For ever and anon the soul becomes weary of the conventions that are not of it, and with a single stroke shatters the civilized lies with which it is unable to cope, and the strong arm reaches out and takes by force what it cannot win by cunning.
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If there were no girls like them in the world, there would be no poetry
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Happy people do a great deal for their friends.
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Human relationships are the tragic necessity of human life; that they can never be wholly satisfactory, that every ego is half the time greedily seeking them, and half the time pulling away from them.
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Every artist makes herself born. You must bring the artist into the world yourself.
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The land belongs to the future.
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The revolt against individualism naturally calls artists severely to account, because the artist is of all men the most individual; those who were not have been long forgotten.
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Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale; legends and stories nestled like birds in its branches.
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You must not begin to fret about the successes of cheap people. After all, what have they to do with you?
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I've seen it before. There are women who spread ruin through no fault of theirs, just by being too beautiful, too ful of life and love. They can't help it. Poeple come to them as people go to a warm fire in winter.
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One realizes that human relationships are the tragic necessity of human life; that they can never be wholly satisfactory, that every ego is half the time greedily seeking them, and half the time pulling away from them. In those simple relationships of loving husband and wife, affectionate sisters, children and grandmother, there are innumerable shades of sweetness and anguish which make up the pattern of our lives day by day, though they are not down in the list of subjects from which the conventional novelist works.
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One summer evening in the year 1848, three Cardinals and a missionary were dining together in the gardens of a villa in the Sabine hills, overlooking Rome.
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A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves.
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Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement.
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A child's attitude toward everything is an artist's attitude.
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Alexandra sighed. "I have a feeling that if you go away, you will not come back. Something will happen to one of us, or to both. People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find. What I have is yours if you care enough about me to take it.
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Too much information is rather deadening.
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Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact.
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Oh, that's the beauty of the rose, that it blossoms and dies.