491 Quotes by Willa Cather

The children you don’t especially need, you have always with you, like the poor. But the bright ones get away from you. They have their own way to make in the world. Seems like the brighter they are, the farther they go.

He reminded himself of that cry, wrung from his Saviour on the Cross, “J’ai soif!” Of all our Lord’s physical sufferings, only one, “I thirst,” rose to His lips.

The pale, cold light of the winter sunset did not beautify – it was like the light of truth itself.

As I remember them, what unprotected faces they were; their very roughness and violence made them defenceless. These boys had no practised manner behind which they could retreat and hold people at a distance. They only had their hard fists to batter at the world with.

You can’t tell me anything about family life. I’ve had plenty to last me.’ ‘But it’s not all like that,’ I objected. ‘Near enough. It’s all being under somebody’s thumb.

He had been a fool to imagine it, but he was glad he had been a fool. She had given him one grand dream.

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

The flakes came down so thickly that from the sitting-room windows I could not see beyond the windmill – its frame looked dim and grey, unsubstantial like a shadow. The snow did not stop falling all day, or during the night that followed. The cold was not severe, but the storm was quiet and resistless.

The carnations in his coat were drooping with the cold, he noticed, their red glory all over.