Welcome to our collection of insightful and inspiring quotes by Willa Cather, a renowned American author celebrated for her vivid depictions of frontier life and the American Midwest. Willa Cather’s works are renowned for their evocative portrayal of the human experience, often exploring themes of identity, connection to the land, and the challenges of life on the frontier. Through her elegant prose and keen observations, Cather captured the essence of the American landscape and the complexities of the human spirit, leaving an indelible mark on literature.
Born in 1873 in Virginia, Willa Cather grew up in Nebraska, where the vast prairies and rugged terrain would later serve as the backdrop for many of her novels. Her writing reflects a deep appreciation for the beauty and harshness of the natural world, as well as a profound understanding of the human condition. Throughout her career, Cather’s novels, including My Ántonia, O Pioneers!, and Death Comes for the Archbishop, have garnered widespread acclaim and continue to be cherished by readers around the world for their timeless themes and lyrical prose.
Below, you’ll find a selection of Willa Cather’s most memorable quotes. Feel free to use them as inspiration, share them with others, or adorn them with stylish fonts to add a touch of elegance to your creations. Let these words resonate with you as you explore the profound wisdom and insight contained within Cather’s literary legacy.
The irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand. Willa Cather
The condition every art requires is, not so much freedom from restriction, as freedom from adulteration and from the intrusion of foreign matter. Willa Cather
When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them as if their reason had left them. When it has left a place where we have always found it, it is like shipwreck; we drop from security into something malevolent and bottomless. Willa Cather
Where there is great love, there are always wishes. Willa Cather
I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived. Willa Cather
There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before. Willa Cather
The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not 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. Willa Cather
Paris is a hard place to leave, even when it rains incessantly and one coughs continually from the dampness. Willa Cather
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. Willa Cather
The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own. Willa Cather
A work-room should be like an old shoe; no matter how shabby, it’s better than a new one. Willa Cather
Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening. Willa Cather
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. Willa Cather
Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact. Willa Cather
Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. Willa Cather
Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement. Willa Cather
The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is. Willa Cather
Sometimes I wonder why God ever trusts talent in the hands of women, they usually make such an infernal mess of it. I think He must do it as a sort of ghastly joke. Willa Cather
The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor. Willa Cather
Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile, his friends are everything. Willa Cather
There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm. Willa Cather
No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person. Willa Cather
The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young. Willa Cather
Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again. Willa Cather
It does not matter much whom we live with in this world, but it matters a great deal whom we dream of. Willa Cather
Every artist makes himself born. It is very much harder than the other time, and longer. Willa Cather
The sun was like a great visiting presence that stimulated and took its due from all animal energy. When it flung wide its cloak and stepped down over the edge of the fields at evening, it left behind it a spent and exhausted world. Willa Cather
Sometimes a neighbor whom we have disliked a lifetime for his arrogance and conceit lets fall a single commonplace remark that shows us another side, another man, really; a man uncertain, and puzzled, and in the dark like ourselves. Willa Cather
The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper whether little or great, it belongs to Literature. Willa Cather
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. Willa Cather
When we look back, the only things we cherish are those which in some way met our original want; the desire which formed in us in early youth, undirected, and of its own accord. Willa Cather
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. Willa Cather
That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. Willa Cather
Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen. Willa Cather
