491 Quotes by Willa Cather

Money and office and success are the consolations of impotence. Fortune turns kind to such solid people and lets them suck their bone in peace. She flecks her whip upon flesh that is more alive, upon that stream of hungry boys and girls who tramp the streets of every city, recognizable by their pride and discontent, who are the Future, and who possess the treasure of creative power.

Oh, better I like to work out-of-doors than in a house!’ she used to sing joyfully. ‘I not care that your grandmother say it makes me like a man. I like to be like a man.

Niel felt tonight that the right man could still save her, even now. She was still her own indomitable self, going through her old part, – but only the stage hands were left to listen to her. All those who had shared in fine undertakings and bright occasions were gone.

To note an artist’s limitations is but to define his talent.

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.

As far as we could see, the miles of copper red grass were drenched in sunlight that was stronger and fiercer than at any other time of day.

I liked to watch a play with Lena; everything was wonderful to her, and everything was true. It was like going to revival meetings with someone who was always being converted.

It opened with the melancholy reflection that, in the lives of mortals the best days are the first to flee. ‘Optima dies... prima fugit.’ I turned back to the beginning of the third book, which we had read in class that morning. ‘Primus ego in patriam mecum... deducam Musas’; ’for I shall be the first, if I live, to bring the Muse into my country.

I never came upon the place without emotion, and in all that country it was the spot most dear to me. I loved the dim superstition, the propitiatory intent, that had put the grave there; and still more I loved the spirit that could not carry out the sentence – the error from the surveyed lines, the clemency of the soft earth roads along which the home-coming wagons rattled after sunset. Never a tired driver passed the wooden cross, I am sure, without wishing well to the sleeper.