The quotations of

Willa Cather

American writer

1873–1947

16 quotes, most often on Nature, Love and Friendship.

There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.
The Song of the Lark (1915), Part VI, Ch. 7
- Education
- Experience
Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.
The Song of the Lark (1915), Part VI, Ch. 11
- Art
- Truth & Lies
No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person.
Alexander’s Bridge (1912) Ch. 8
- Character
The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.
O Pioneers! (1913), Part I, Ch. 5
- History
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
O Pioneers! (1913), Part II, Ch. 8
- Nature
There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.
O Pioneers! (1913), Part II, Ch. 4
- History
- Writing
I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge.
My Ántonia (1918), My Antonia (1918), Book I, Ch. 2In context
- Happiness
- Life & Death
Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.
“Four Letters: Escapism” first published in Commonweal (17 April 1936)
It does not matter much whom we live with in this world, but it matters a great deal whom we dream of.
Youth and the Bright Medusa, “A Gold Slipper” (1920)
- Love
We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it — for a little while.
O Pioneers! (1913), Part V, Ch. 3
- Nature
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.
The Song of the Lark (1915), Part VI, Ch. 2
- Youth
In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.
My Ántonia (1918), My Antonia (1918), Book V, Ch. 1In context
- Age
Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. The landscape one longed for when one was away, the thing all about one, the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky!
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), Book VII, Ch. 4
- Nature
There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.
My Ántonia (1918), Book I: The Shimerdas, Chapter IIn context
- Nature
I’d have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister⁠—anything that a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don’t realize it. You really are a part of me.
My Ántonia (1918), Book IV: The Pioneer Woman’s Story, Chapter IVIn context
- Friendship
- Love

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