491 Quotes by Willa Cather

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

The supreme virtue in art is soul, perhaps it is the only thing which gives it the right to be.

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. It must have been the scarcity of detail in that tawny landscape that made detail so precious.

Today I stood taller from walking among the trees.

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.

Where are the loves that we have loved beforeWhen once we are alone, and shut the door?

The world is always full of brilliant youth which fades into grey and embittered middle age: the first flowering takes everything. The great men are those who have developed slowly, or who have been able to survive the glamour of their early florescence and to go on learning from life.

Too much information is rather deadening.

We all like people who do things, even if we only see their faces on a cigar-box lid.