Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Willa Cather
Age: 73 †
Born: 1873
Born: December 7
Died: 1947
Died: April 24
Author
Biographer
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Willa Sibert Cather
Moment
Elusive
Strong
Element
Running
Shining
Away
Elements
Moments
Sweet
Art
Lose
Imprison
Past
Loses
Hurrying
Life
Stop
Mould

More quotes by Willa Cather

Image
Yes, and because we grow old we become more and more the stuff our forbears put into us. I can feel his savagery strengthen in me. We think we are so individual and so misunderstood when we are young but the nature our strain of blood carries is inside there, waiting, like our skeleton.
Willa Cather
Image
The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing — desire.
Willa Cather
Image
It's all very well to tell us to forgive our enemies our enemies can never hurt us very much. But oh, what about forgiving our friends?
Willa Cather
Image
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.
Willa Cather
Image
There was only - spring itself, the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it everywhere in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in the warm high wind - rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive ... If I had been tossed down blindfold on that red prairie, I should have known that it was spring.
Willa Cather
Image
New things are always ugly.
Willa Cather
Image
Wherever humanity has made that hardest of all starts and lifted itself out of mere brutality is a sacred spot.
Willa Cather
Image
Personal hatred and family affection are not incompatible they often flourish and grow strong together.
Willa Cather
Image
Even the wicked get worse than they deserve.
Willa Cather
Image
The trouble is you almost have to marry a man before you can find out the sort of wife he needs and usually it's exactly the sort you are not.
Willa Cather
Image
Too much detail is apt, like any other form of extravagance, to become slightly vulgar.
Willa Cather
Image
To fulfil the dreams of one's youth that is the best that can happen to a man. No worldly success can take the place of that.
Willa Cather
Image
The sky was a midnight-blue, like warm, deep, blue water, and the moon seemed to lie on it like a water-lily, floating forward with an invisible current.
Willa Cather
Image
All Southern women wished of their menfolk was simply to be 'like Paris handsome and like Hector brave'.
Willa Cather
Image
Some things are best learned in calm, others in storm.
Willa Cather
Image
One may have staunch friends in one's own family, but one seldom has admirers.
Willa Cather
Image
Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.
Willa Cather
Image
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.
Willa Cather
Image
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.
Willa Cather
Image
If [the writer] achieves anything noble, anything enduring, it must be by giving himself absolutely to his material. And this gift of sympathy is his great gift is the fine thing in him that alone can make his work fine.
Willa Cather