Willa Cather Quotes

Personal hatred and family affection are not incompatible; they often flourish and grow strong together.

One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away.

A watch is the most essential part of a lecture.

William Tavener never heeded ominous forecasts in the domestic horizon, and he never looked for a storm until it broke.

Religion is different from everything else; because in religion seeking is finding.

I have sometimes thought that his bursts of imaginative talk were fatal to his poetic gift. He squandered too much in the heat of personal communication.

Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones.

Old men are like that, you know. It makes them feel important to think they are in love with somebody.

If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky i felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers that night: here, i felt what would be would be.

If there were no girls like them in the world, there would be no poetry

Henry Colbert, the miller, always breakfasted with his wife--beyond that he appeared irregularly at the family table.

The trees and shrubbery seemed well-groomed and social, like pleasant people.

This land was an enigma. It was like a horse that no one knows how to break to harness, that runs wild and kicks things to pieces.

I ain't got time to learn. I can work like mans now.

Most publishers, like most writers, are ruined by their successes.

In a few hours one could cover that incalculable distance; from the winter country and homely neighbours, to the city where the air trembled like a tuning-fork with unimaginable possibilities.

Dr. Howard Archie had just come up from a game of pool with the Jewish clothier and two traveling men who happened to be staying overnight in Moonstone.

Claude Wheeler opened his eyes before the sun was up and vigorously shook his younger brother, who lay in the other half of the same bed.

An artist's saddest secrets are those that have to do with his artistry.

"More than him has done that," said Antonia sadly, and the girls murmured assent.

The prayers of all good people are good.

Where there is great love, there are always miracles.

I guess everybody thinks about old times, even the happiest people.

Religion is different from everything else because in religion seeking is finding.

What was any art but a mold to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself- life hurrying past us and running away, to strong to stop, too sweet to lose.

It seems to me that the pleasure one feels in a work of art is just one thing that one does not have to explain.

Trees were so rare in that country, and they had to make such a hard fight to grow, that we used to feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were persons.

I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody.

I only knew the schoolbooks said he "died in the wilderness, of a broken heart.""More than him has done that, " said Antonia sadly, and the girls murmured assent.

Her secret? It is every artist's secret--passion. That is all. It is an open secret, and perfectly safe. Like heroism, it is inimitable in cheap materials.

He knew he would always remember her, standing there with that expectant, forward-looking smile, enough to turn the future into summer.

Old people, who have felt blows and toil and known the world's hard hand, need, even more than children do, a woman's tenderness.

And I advise ye to think well, he told her It's better to be a stray dog in this world than a man without money. I've tried it both ways, and I know. A poor man stinks, and God hates him.

I suppose the test of one's decency is how much of a fight one can put up after one has stopped caring, and after one has found that one can never please the people they wanted to please.

It's by understanding me, and the boys, and mother, that you have helped me. I expect that is the only way one person ever really can help another.

As in most families, the mere struggle to have anything of one's own, to be one's self at all, creates an element of strain that keeps everybody almost at the breaking point.

Either a building is part of a place or it is not. Once that kinship is there, time will only make it stronger.

Some memories are realities and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.

Miracles surround us at every turn, if we but sharpen our perceptions to them.

The old man smiled. 'I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die of having lived.

There are some things you learn best in calm and some in storm.

There is only one big thing-desire. And before it when it is big all is little.

I tell you there is no such thing as creative hate!

Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.

That is happiness: to be dissolved into something completely great.

Where there is great love there are always wishes.

I am enjoying to a full that period of reflection which is the happiest conclusion to a life of action.

No one can builu her security upon the nobleness of another person.

Art it seems to me should simplify.

Some memories are realities and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.