Willa Cather Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Willa Cather's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Author Willa Cather's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 240 quotes on this page collected since December 7, 1873! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • The end is nothing; the road is all.

    Willa Cather (1990). “Willa Cather in Person: Interviews, Speeches, and Letters”, p.76, U of Nebraska Press
  • When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them as if their reason had left them. When it has left a place where we have always found it, it is like shipwreck; we drop from security into something malevolent and bottomless.

    My Mortal Enemy pt. 1, ch. 6 (1926)
  • It is scarcely exaggeration to say that if one is not a little mad about Balzac at twenty, one will never live; and if at forty one can still take Rastignac and Lucien de Rubempre at Balzac's own estimate, one has lived in vain.

    Willa Cather (1988). “Not Under Forty”, p.24, U of Nebraska Press
  • 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.

    Willa Cather (2011). “My Mortal Enemy”, p.18, Vintage
  • Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand - a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods - or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.

    Willa Cather (1988). “Willa Cather on Writing: Critical Studies on Writing as an Art”, p.103, U of Nebraska Press
  • There was a new kind of strength in the gravity of her face, and her colors still gave her that look of deep-seated health and ardor.

    Willa Cather (2012). “My Ántonia”, p.168, Courier Corporation
  • Ah! the terror and the delight of that moment when first we fear ourselves! Until then we have not lived.

    Willa Cather (2016). “The First Willa Cather MEGAPACK®: 50 Classic Short Works”, p.244, Wildside Press LLC
  • The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.

    Willa Cather (2013). “The Best of Willa Cather”, p.749, Simon and Schuster
  • Old men are like that, you know. It makes them feel important to think they are in love with somebody.

    Willa Cather (2016). “My çntonia”, p.159, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
  • The soul cannot be humbled by fasts and prayer; it must be broken by mortal sin to experience forgiveness of sin and rise to a state of grace. Otherwise, religion is nothing but dead logic.

    Willa Cather (2011). “Death Comes for the Archbishop”, p.146, Vintage
  • She had certain thoughts which were like companions, ideas which were like older and wiser friends.

    Willa Cather (2012). “The Song of the Lark”, p.37, Courier Corporation
  • Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.

    Quoted in Rene¤ Rapin Willa Cather (1930).
  • Today I stood taller from walking among the trees.

  • All Southern women wished of their menfolk was simply to be 'like Paris handsome and like Hector brave'.

  • The great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes.

    Willa Cather (2013). “The Best of Willa Cather”, p.68, Simon and Schuster
  • If youth did not matter so much to itself, it would never have the heart to go on.

    Willa Cather (2013). “The Best of Willa Cather”, p.286, Simon and Schuster
  • Personal life becomes paler as the imaginative life becomes richer.

    Willa Cather (1954). “My Antonia”
  • The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity.

    Willa Cather (2012). “The Song of the Lark”, p.133, Courier Corporation
  • This is reality, whether you like it or not--all those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was underneath. This is the truth.

    Lying  
    Willa Cather (2013). “The Essential Willa Cather Collection”, p.463, eBookIt.com
  • We all like people who do things, even if we only see their faces on cigar-box lids.

    Willa Cather (2013). “The Best of Willa Cather”, p.274, Simon and Schuster
  • In little towns, lives roll along so close to one another; loves and hates beat about, their wings almost touching.

    Willa Cather (1938). “The Novels and Stories of Willa Cather ...”
  • The two friends stood for a few moments on the windy street corner, not speaking a word, as two travelers, who have lost their way, sometimes stand and admit their perplexity in silence. (O Pioneers!)

    Willa Cather (2009). “O Pioneers!: Easyread Large Bold Edition”, p.6, ReadHowYouWant.com
  • Too much detail is apt, like any other form of extravagance, to become slightly vulgar.

    Willa Cather, Marilee Lindemann (2008). “O Pioneers!”, p.173, Oxford University Press
  • The trees and shrubbery seemed well-groomed and social, like pleasant people.

  • life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.

    Willa Cather (2013). “The Best of Willa Cather”, p.375, Simon and Schuster
  • A work-room should be like an old shoe; no matter how shabby, it's better than a new one.

    Willa Cather (2002). “The Professor's House”, p.59, U of Nebraska Press
  • The land belongs to the future.

    Willa Cather (2016). “My Antonia / O Pioneers!”, p.490, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  • The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

    Willa Cather (2012). “The Song of the Lark”, p.305, Courier Corporation
  • People live through such pain only once. Pain comes again—but it finds a tougher surface.

    Willa Cather (2013). “The Best of Willa Cather”, p.342, Simon and Schuster
  • One afternoon late in October of the year 1697, Euclide Auclair, the philosopher apothecary of Quebec, stood on the top of Cap Diamant gazing down the broad, empty river far beneath him.

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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 240 quotes from the Author Willa Cather, starting from December 7, 1873! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!