491 Quotes by Willa Cather

Like all romancers, she is a little terrified at seeing one of her wildest conceits admitted by the hard-headed world. If our dream comes true, we are almost afraid to believe it; for that is the best of all good fortune, and nothing better can happen to any of us.

To fulfil the dreams of one’s youth; that is the best that can happen to a man. No worldly success can take the place of that.

The prayers of all good people are good,” he said quietly.

Prayers said by good people are always good prayers.

People live through such pain only once. Pain comes again – but it finds a tougher surface.

I was thinking, as I watched her, how little it mattered – about her teeth, for instance. I know so many women who have kept all the things that she had lost, but whose inner glow has faded. Whatever else was gone, Antonia had not lost the fire of life.

But she’s the kind that won’t be downed easily. She’ll work all day and go to a Bohemian wedding and dance all night, and drive the hay wagon for a cross man next morning.

Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

On the edge of the prairie, where the sun had gone down, the sky was turquoise blue, like a lake, with gold light throbbing in it. Higher up, in the utter clarity of the western slope, the evening star hung like a lamp suspended by silver chains – like the lamp engraved up the title-page of old Latin texts, which is always appearing in new heavens and waking new desires in men.