Willa Cather

“Success is never so interesting as struggle”
-- Willa Cather

#Struggle #Interesting

“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

#Writing #Caring #Fighting

“There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.”
-- Willa Cather

#Inspirational #Summer #Nature

“The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor.”
-- Willa Cather

#Girl #Ambition #Facts

“I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.”
-- Willa Cather

#Tree #Way #Aging

“There was nothing but land; not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.”
-- Willa Cather

#Country #Land #Made

“Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.”
-- Willa Cather

#Writing #Age #Fifteen

“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. 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 again.”
-- Willa Cather

#Memories #Reality #Years

“Life was so short that it meant nothing at all unless it were continually reinforced by something that endured; unless the shadows of individual existence came and went against a background that held together.”
-- Willa Cather

#Shadow #Together #Individual

“Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things.”
-- Willa Cather

#Men #Faster

“The sun was like a great visiting presence that stimulated and took its due from all animal energy. When it flung wide its cloak and stepped down over the edge of the fields at evening, it left behind it a spent and exhausted world.”
-- Willa Cather

#Animal #World #Fields

“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?”
-- Willa Cather

#Inspiring #Friends #Hurt

“Where there is great love, there are always wishes.”
-- Willa Cather

#Love #Sympathy #Valentines Day

“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

#Inspirational #Life #Achievement

“Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.”
-- Willa Cather

#Memories #Reality #Moments

“I suppose there were moonless nights and dark ones with but a silver shaving and pale stars in the sky, but I remember them all as flooded with the rich indolence of a full moon.”
-- Willa Cather

#Stars #Dark #Moon

“Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen.”
-- Willa Cather

#Country #Lying #Winter

“The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing — desire.”
-- Willa Cather

#People #Desire #World

“He had been to see Mrs. Erlich just before starting home for the holidays, and found her making German Christmas cakes. She took him into the kitchen and explained the almost holy traditions that governed this complicated cookery. Her excitement and seriousness as she beat and stirred were very pretty, Claude thought. She told off on her fingers the many ingredients, but he believed there were things she did not name: the fragrance of old friendships, the glow of early memories, belief in wonder-working rhymes and songs.”
-- Willa Cather

#Christmas #Song #Memories

“Every artist makes himself born. It is very much harder than the other time, and longer.”
-- Willa Cather

#Artist #Born #Harder

“The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own.”
-- Willa Cather

#Nature #Heart #Dark

“In New Mexico, he always awoke a young man, not until he arose and began to shave did he realize that he was growing older. His first consciousness was a sense of the light dry wind blowing in through the windows, with the fragrance of hot sun and sage-brush and sweet clover; a wind that made one's body feel light and one's heart cry 'To-day, to-day,' like a child's.”
-- Willa Cather

#Love #Sweet #Children

“Thirty or forty years ago, in one those grey towns along the Burlington railroad which are so much greyer to-day than they were then, there was a house well know from Omaha to Denver for its hospitality and for a certain charm of atmosphere.”
-- Willa Cather

#Book #Years #House

“Late one brilliant April afternoon Professor Lucius Wilson stood at the head of Chestnut Street, looking about him with the pleased air of a man of taste who does not very often get to Boston.”
-- Willa Cather

#Book #Men #Air

“Even the wicked get worse than they deserve.”
-- Willa Cather

#Fate #Punishment #Wicked

“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

#Thinking #Tree #Way

“It is cremated youth. It is all yours--no one gave it to you.”
-- Willa Cather

#Youth

“Life began for me, when I ceased to admire and began to remember.”
-- Willa Cather

#Love #Remember #Admire

“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

#Lying #Character #Writing

“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.”
-- Willa Cather