Quote

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.

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
Make
Fine
Endure
Alone
Noble
Anything
Material
Must
Gift
Giving
Absolutely
Great
Materials
Achieves
Thing
Writer
Enduring
Work
Achieve
Sympathy

More quotes by Willa Cather

Image
Let people go on talking as they like, and we will go on living as we think best.
Willa Cather
Image
The heart, when it is too much alive, aches for that brown earth, and ecstasy has no fear of death.
Willa Cather
Image
The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor.
Willa Cather
Image
Money is a protection, a cloak it can buy one quiet, and some sort of dignity.
Willa Cather
Image
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.
Willa Cather
Image
Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness.
Willa Cather
Image
It is easy to pity when once one's vanity has been tickled.
Willa Cather
Image
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
Image
In great misfortunes, people want to be alone. They have a right to be. And the misfortunes that occur within one are the greatest. Surely the saddest thing in the world is falling out of love--if once one has ever fallen in.
Willa Cather
Image
Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement.
Willa Cather
Image
Ah! the terror and the delight of that moment when first we fear ourselves! Until then we have not lived.
Willa Cather
Image
It takes a great deal of experience to become natural.
Willa Cather
Image
[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.
Willa Cather
Image
In Haverford on the Platte the townspeople still talk of Lucy Gayheart.
Willa Cather
Image
The summer moon hung full in the sky. For the time being it was the great fact of the world.
Willa Cather
Image
life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.
Willa Cather
Image
Loyal? As loyal as anyone who plays second fiddle ever is.
Willa Cather
Image
Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale legends and stories nestled like birds in its branches.
Willa Cather
Image
The end is nothing the road is all.
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