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To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent.

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
Define
Notes
Talent
Artist
Limitations
Note
Limitation

More quotes by Willa Cather

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I had killed a big snake. I was now a big fellow.
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Old people, who have felt blows and toil and known the world's hard hand, need, even more than children do, a woman's tenderness.
Willa Cather
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When we look back, the only things we cherish are those which in some way met our original want the desire which formed in us in early youth, undirected, and of its own accord.
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The only thing very noticeable about Nebraska was that it was still, all day long, Nebraska.
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Oh, this is the joy of the rose That it blows, And goes.
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They ravaged neither the rivers nor the forest, and if they irrigated, they took as little water as would serve their needs. The land and all that it bore they treated with consideration not attempting to improve it, they never desecrated it.
Willa Cather
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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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To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.
Willa Cather
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The test of one's decency is how much of a fight one can put up after one has stopped caring, and after one has found out that one can never please the people they wanted to please.
Willa Cather
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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.
Willa Cather
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Every fine story must leave in the mind of the sensitive reader an intangible residuum of pleasure, a cadence, a quality of voice that is exclusively the writer's own, individual, unique.
Willa Cather
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Imagination, which is a quality writers must have, does not mean the ability to weave pretty stories out of nothing. In the right sense, imagination is a response to what is going on — a sensitiveness to which outside things appeal. It is a composition of sympathy and observation.
Willa Cather
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Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones.
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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Freedom so often means that one isn't needed anywhere.
Willa Cather
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There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.
Willa Cather
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She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last.
Willa Cather
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Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.
Willa Cather
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Success is less interesting than struggle. There is great pleasure in the effort.
Willa Cather
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How terrible it was to love people when you could not really share their lives!
Willa Cather