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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

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Willa Cather
Age: 73 †
Born: 1873
Born: December 7
Died: 1947
Died: April 24
Author
Biographer
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Willa Sibert Cather
Look
Cherish
Looks
Originals
Way
Original
Things
Mets
Early
Youth
Undirected
Desire
Accord
Back
Formed

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Oh, that's the beauty of the rose, that it blossoms and dies.
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Imagination, which is a quality writers must have, does not mean the ability to weave pretty stories out of nothing. In the right sense, imagination is a response to what is going on — a sensitiveness to which outside things appeal. It is a composition of sympathy and observation.
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Where there is great love there are always miracles.
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The qualities of a second-rate writer can easily be defined, but a first-rate writer can only be experienced. It is just the thing in him which escapes analysis that makes him first-rate.
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Winter lies too long in country towns hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen.
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A soup like this is not the work of one man. It is the result of a constantly refined tradition. There are nearly a thousand years of history in this soup.
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Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.
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Prayers said by good people are always good prayers
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I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. I feel as if this tree knows everything I ever think of when I sit here. When I come back to it, I never have to remind it of anything I begin just where I left off.
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People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find.
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A burnt dog dreads the fire.
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Some things are best learned in calm, others in storm.
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People live through such pain only once. Pain comes again—but it finds a tougher surface.
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The air was cool enough to make the warm sun pleasant on one's back and shoulders, and so clear that the eye could follow a hawk up and up, into the blazing blue depths of the sky.
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When the eyes of the flesh are shut, the eyes of the spirit are open.
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They ravaged neither the rivers nor the forest, and if they irrigated, they took as little water as would serve their needs. The land and all that it bore they treated with consideration not attempting to improve it, they never desecrated it.
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I don't want anyone reading my writing to think about style. I just want them to be in the story.
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A creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.
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One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness one only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere, and hold fast to the days.
Willa Cather
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I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived.
Willa Cather