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It is a tragic hour, that hour when we are finally driven to reckon with ourselves, when every avenue of mental distraction has been cut off and our own life and all its ineffaceable failures closes about us like the walls of that old torture chamber of the Inquisition.

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
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Finally
Chamber
Hour
Distraction
Failure
Failures
Cutting
Walls
Reckon
Wall
Torture
Inquisition
Hours
Tragic
Closes
Every
Mental
Avenue
Life
Driven
Avenues

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I tell you there is such a thing as creative hate.
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The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.
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All Southern women wished of their menfolk was simply to be 'like Paris handsome and like Hector brave'.
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Most publishers, like most writers, are ruined by their successes.
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Old men are like that, you know. It makes them feel important to think they are in love with somebody.
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Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening.
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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.
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The sincerity of feeling that is possible between a writer and a reader is one of the finest things I know.
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The irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand.
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People always think the bread of another country is better than their own.
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The revolt against individualism naturally calls artists severely to account, because the artist is of all men the most individual those who were not have been long forgotten.
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Religion is different from everything else because in religion seeking is finding.
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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.
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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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Thea was still under the belief that public opinion could be placated that if you clucked often enough, the hens would mistake you for one of themselves.
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No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person. Two people, when they love each other, grow alike in their tastes and habits and pride, but their moral natures (whatever we may mean by that canting expression) are never welded. The base one goes on being base, and the noble one noble, to the end.
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The great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes.
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A work-room should be like an old shoe no matter how shabby, it's better than a new one.
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The air and the earth interpenetrated in the warm gusts of spring the soil was full of sunlight, and the sunlight full of red dust. The air one breathed was saturated with earthy smells, and the grass under foot had a reflection of the blue sky in it.
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A creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.
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