Quote

Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones. They begin to tell you what's sensible and what's foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time. I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody.

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
Even
Friends
Foolish
Men
Turns
Sticks
Cranky
Time
Father
Wild
Accountable
Like
Tell
Soon
Fathers
Home
Begin
Marry
Right
Nobody
Sensible
Feel
Ones
Stick
Feels
Turn
Prefer

More quotes by 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
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
It is scarcely exaggeration to say that if one is not a little mad about Balzac at twenty, one will never live and if at forty one can still take Rastignac and Lucien de Rubempre at Balzac's own estimate, one has lived in vain.
Willa Cather
Image
Religion is different from everything else because in religion seeking is finding.
Willa Cather
Image
More than him has done that, said Antonia sadly, and the girls murmured assent.
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, the Germans classify, but the French arrange.
Willa Cather
Image
I've seen it before. There are women who spread ruin through no fault of theirs, just by being too beautiful, too ful of life and love. They can't help it. Poeple come to them as people go to a warm fire in winter.
Willa Cather
Image
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
Willa Cather
Image
Life began for me, when I ceased to admire and began to remember.
Willa Cather
Image
A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves.
Willa Cather
Image
Too much detail is apt, like any other form of extravagance, to become slightly vulgar.
Willa Cather
Image
One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away.
Willa Cather
Image
The pale, cold light of the winter sunset did not beautify - it was like the light of truth itself.
Willa Cather
Image
Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man. Drunkenness is merely an exaggeration. A foolish man drunk becomes maudlin a bloody man, vicious a coarse man, vulgar.
Willa Cather
Image
The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own.
Willa Cather
Image
The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.
Willa Cather
Image
When people ask me if it has been a hard or easy road, I always answer with the same quotation, the end is nothing, the road is all.Willa Cather
Willa Cather
Image
One summer evening in the year 1848, three Cardinals and a missionary were dining together in the gardens of a villa in the Sabine hills, overlooking Rome.
Willa Cather
Image
In this world people have to pay an extortionate price for any exceptional gift whatever.
Willa Cather