491 Quotes by Willa Cather

I belong on a farm. I'm never lonesome here like I used to be in town. You remember what sad spells I used to have, when I didn't know what was the matter with me? I've never had them out here. And I don't mind work a bit, if I don't have to put up with sadness.

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

One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love. I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I see you through my affection for you. The Miracles of the Church seem to me not to rest so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.

The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor.

The Queen had a jewel of great value, a turquoise that had fallen from the sun, and had the image of the sun upon it. And when she desired a young man whom she had seen in the army or among the slaves, she sent the Captive to him with the jewel.

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

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.

The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing — desire.

When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them, as if their reason has left them.