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Willa Cather Quotes

1873–1947 United States

Willa Sibert Cather (7 December 1873 – 24 April 1947) is among the most eminent American authors, known for her depictions of US life in her novels.

United States
20th-century poets
Academics
Authors
Biographers

Also known as: Cather, Willa, Cather, Willa Sibert

Random Willa Cather quote

77 quotes

Only the stupid and the phlegmatic should teach.

My Mortal Enemy (1926)

Every artist makes himself born. It is very much harder than the other time, and longer.

The Song of the Lark (1915)

The great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes.

O Pioneers! (1913)

The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.

One of Ours (1922)

Nothing is far and nothing is near, if one desires. The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing — desire.

The Song of the Lark (1915)

Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family — but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.

Shadows on the Rock (1931)

Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. The landscape one longed for when one was away, the thing all about one, the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky!

Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)

That irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand.

Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)

I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge.

My Antonia (1918)

There's nothing so dangerous as sitting still. You've only got one life, one youth, and you can let it slip through your fingers if you want to; nothing easier. Most people do that.

The Bohemian Girl (1912)

Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement.

The Professor's House (1925)

The great pines stand at a considerable distance from each other. Each tree grows alone, murmurs alone, thinks alone. They do not intrude upon each other.

The Song of the Lark (1915)

To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.

Not Under Forty (1936)

I ain't got time to learn. I can work like mans now.

My Antonia (1918)

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.

The Song of the Lark (1915)

It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and straight. She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.

My Antonia (1918)

He had seen the end of an era, the sunset of the pioneer. He had come upon it when already its glory was nearly spent.

A Lost Lady (1923)

All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens.

The Song of the Lark (1915)

Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.

My Antonia (1918)

Beautiful women, whose beauty meant more than it said... was their brilliancy always fed by something coarse and concealed? Was that their secret?

A Lost Lady (1923)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Willa Cather (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.