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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

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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
Moments
Sweet
Art
Lose
Imprison
Past
Loses
Hurrying
Life
Stop
Mould
Moment
Elusive
Strong
Element
Running
Shining
Away
Elements

More quotes by Willa Cather

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Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin.
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Pity is sworn servant unto love: And this be sure, wherever it begin To make the way, it lets your master in.
Willa Cather
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Success is less interesting than struggle. There is great pleasure in the effort.
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The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor.
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One afternoon late in October of the year 1697, Euclide Auclair, the philosopher apothecary of Quebec, stood on the top of Cap Diamant gazing down the broad, empty river far beneath him.
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Ah! the terror and the delight of that moment when first we fear ourselves! Until then we have not lived.
Willa Cather
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She had certain thoughts which were like companions, ideas which were like older and wiser friends.
Willa Cather
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The end is nothing the road is all.
Willa Cather
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Freedom so often means that one isn't needed anywhere. Here you are an individual, you have a background of your own, you would be missed. But off there in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing.
Willa Cather
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Wherever humanity has made that hardest of all starts and lifted itself out of mere brutality is a sacred spot.
Willa Cather
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Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale legends and stories nestled like birds in its branches.
Willa Cather
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In other searchings it might be the object of the quest that brought satisfaction, or it might be something incidental that one got on the way but in religion, desire was fulfilment, it was the seeking itself that rewarded.
Willa Cather
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Alexandra sighed. I have a feeling that if you go away, you will not come back. Something will happen to one of us, or to both. People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find. What I have is yours if you care enough about me to take it.
Willa Cather
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William Tavener never heeded ominous forecasts in the domestic horizon, and he never looked for a storm until it broke.
Willa Cather
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One may have staunch friends in one's own family, but one seldom has admirers.
Willa Cather
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In great misfortunes, people want to be alone. They have a right to be. And the misfortunes that occur within one are the greatest. Surely the saddest thing in the world is falling out of love--if once one has ever fallen in.
Willa Cather
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Art is a concrete and personal and rather childish thing after all - no matter what people do to graft it into science and make it sociological and psychological it is no good at all unless it is let alone to be itself - a game of make-believe, or re-production, very exciting and delightful to people who have an ear for it or an eye for it.
Willa Cather
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In little towns, lives roll along so close to one another loves and hates beat about, their wings almost touching.
Willa Cather
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Only a Woman, divine, could know all that a woman can suffer.
Willa Cather
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For ever and anon the soul becomes weary of the conventions that are not of it, and with a single stroke shatters the civilized lies with which it is unable to cope, and the strong arm reaches out and takes by force what it cannot win by cunning.
Willa Cather