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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

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

More quotes by Willa Cather

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When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them as if their reason had left them. When it has left a place where we have always found it, it is like shipwreck we drop from security into something malevolent and bottomless.
Willa Cather
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I don't want anyone reading my writing to think about style. I just want them to be in the story.
Willa Cather
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Prayers said by good people are always good prayers
Willa Cather
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Every artist makes himself born. It is very much harder than the other time, and longer.
Willa Cather
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A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves.
Willa Cather
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I wondered if the life that was right for one was ever right for two!
Willa Cather
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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
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Hunger is a powerful incentive to introspection.
Willa Cather
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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.
Willa Cather
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All Southern women wished of their menfolk was simply to be 'like Paris handsome and like Hector brave'.
Willa Cather
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That is happiness to be dissolved into something complete and great.
Willa Cather
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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
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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
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A man long accustomed to admire his wife in general, seldom pauses to admire her in a particular gown or attitude, unless his attention is directed to her by the appreciative gaze of another man.
Willa Cather
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Henry Colbert, the miller, always breakfasted with his wife--beyond that he appeared irregularly at the family table.
Willa Cather
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Look at my papa here he's been dead all these years, and yet he is more real to me than almost anybody else. He never goes out of my life. I talk to him and consult him all the time. The older I grow, the better I know him and the more I understand him.
Willa Cather
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She had certain thoughts which were like companions, ideas which were like older and wiser friends.
Willa Cather
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I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. I feel as if this tree knows everything I ever think of when I sit here. When I come back to it, I never have to remind it of anything I begin just where I left off.
Willa Cather
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The end is nothing the road is all.
Willa Cather
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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