Quote

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

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

More quotes by Willa Cather

Image
Your vivid, exciting companionship in the office must not be your audience, you must find your own quiet center of life, and write from that to the world.
Willa Cather
Image
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.
Willa Cather
Image
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
Image
Oh, that's the beauty of the rose, that it blossoms and dies.
Willa Cather
Image
She had certain thoughts which were like companions, ideas which were like older and wiser friends.
Willa Cather
Image
The great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes.
Willa Cather
Image
Let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your feet.
Willa Cather
Image
Miracles surround us at every turn if we but sharpen our perceptions of them.
Willa Cather
Image
A creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.
Willa Cather
Image
William Tavener never heeded ominous forecasts in the domestic horizon, and he never looked for a storm until it broke.
Willa Cather
Image
A child's attitude toward everything is an artist's attitude.
Willa Cather
Image
life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.
Willa Cather
Image
Dr. Howard Archie had just come up from a game of pool with the Jewish clothier and two traveling men who happened to be staying overnight in Moonstone.
Willa Cather
Image
Even the wicked get worse than they deserve.
Willa Cather
Image
Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.
Willa Cather
Image
Yet the summer which was to change everything was coming nearer every day. When boys and girls are growing up, life can't stand still, not even in the quietest of country towns and they have to grow up, whether they will or no. That is what their elders are always forgetting.
Willa Cather
Image
Old men are like that, you know. It makes them feel important to think they are in love with somebody.
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
I was thinking, as I watched her, how little it mattered –about her teeth for instance. I know so many women who have kept all the things she had lost, *but whose inner glow has faded*. Whatever else was gone, Antonia had not lost the fire of life.
Willa Cather
Image
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