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Life was so short that it meant nothing at all unless it were continually reinforced by something that endured unless the shadows of individual existence came and went against a background that held together.

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
Existence
Background
Came
Backgrounds
Individual
Held
Together
Meant
Nothing
Shadow
Reinforced
Something
Short
Endured
Life
Unless
Continually
Went
Shadows

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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.
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Life began for me, when I ceased to admire and began to remember.
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The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own.
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It takes a great deal of experience to become natural.
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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.
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Oh, that's the beauty of the rose, that it blossoms and dies.
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The soul cannot be humbled by fasts and prayer it must be broken by mortal sin to experience forgiveness of sin and rise to a state of grace. Otherwise, religion is nothing but dead logic.
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Success is never so interesting as struggle
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I first met Myra Henshawe when I was fifteen, but I had known her about ever since I could remember anything at all.
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Claude Wheeler opened his eyes before the sun was up and vigorously shook his younger brother, who lay in the other half of the same bed.
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Only a Woman, divine, could know all that a woman can suffer.
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People always think the bread of another country is better than their own.
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Miracles surround us at every turn if we but sharpen our perceptions of them.
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Oh, this is the joy of the rose That it blows, And goes.
Willa Cather
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I wondered if the life that was right for one was ever right for two!
Willa Cather
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The prayers of all good people are good.
Willa Cather
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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?
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Sometimes, I ventured, it doesn't occur to boys that their mother was ever young and pretty. . . I couldn't stand it if you boys were inconsiderate, or thought of her as if she were just somebody who looked after you. You see I was very much in love with your mother once, and I know there's nobody like her.
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[Mark Twain] is still the rough, awkward, good-natured boy who swore at the deck hands when he was three years old. Thoroughly likeable as a good fellow, but impossible as a man of letters.
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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