Willa Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) was an American writer known for her novels of life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia. In 1923, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, a novel set during World War I. Hope, our collection of Willa Cather Quotes will inspire you to remain hopeful even in the moment of grief.
People can be lovers and enemies at the same time, you know.
– Willa Cather
Willa Cather Quotes
1. “That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.” – Willa Cather
2. “No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person.” – Willa Cather
3. “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
4. “Success is never so interesting as struggle.” – Willa Cather
5. “Where there is great love, there are always miracles.” – Willa Cather
6. “The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing — desire.” – Willa Cather
7. “The soul cannot be humbled by fasts and prayer; it must be broken by mortal sin to experience forgiveness of sin and rise to a state of grace. Otherwise, religion is nothing but dead logic.” – Willa Cather
8. “The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.” – Willa Cather
9. “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
10. “There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.” – Willa Cather
11. “Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.” – Willa Cather
12. “And that’s what makes men happy, believing in the mystery and importance of their own individual lives.” – Willa Cather
13. “People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find.” – Willa Cather
14. “It’s awfully easy to rush into a profession you don’t really like, and awfully hard to get out of it.” – Willa Cather
15. “The end is nothing, the road is all.” – Willa Cather
16. “A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves.” – Willa Cather
17. “Things away from home often look better than they are.” – Willa Cather
18. “The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.” – Willa Cather
19. “Prayers said by good people are always good prayers.” – Willa Cather
20. “Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness.” – Willa Cather
21. “It takes a great deal of experience to become natural.” – Willa Cather
22. “When the eyes of the flesh are shut, the eyes of the spirit are open.” – Willa Cather
23. “Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact.” – Willa Cather
24. “If youth did not matter so much to itself it would never have the heart to go on.” – Willa Cather
25. “I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.” – Willa Cather
26. “Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.” – Willa Cather
27. “After all, the supreme virtue in all art is soul, perhaps it is the only thing which gives art a right to be.” – Willa Cather
28. “To fulfil the dreams of one’s youth; that is the best that can happen to a man. No worldly success can take the place of that.” – Willa Cather
29. “Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky.” – Willa Cather
30. “Miracles surround us at every turn if we but sharpen our perceptions of them.” – Willa Cather
31. “Every artist makes herself born. You must bring the artist into the world yourself.” – Willa Cather
32. “Personal life becomes paler as the imaginative life becomes richer.” – Willa Cather
33. “Money is a protection, a cloak; it can buy one quiet, and some sort of dignity.” – Willa Cather
34. “Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.” – Willa Cather
35. “A work-room should be like an old shoe; no matter how shabby, it’s better than a new one.” – Willa Cather
36. “The irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand.” – Willa Cather
37. “Too much detail is apt, like any other form of extravagance, to become slightly vulgar.” – Willa Cather
38. “Life began for me, when I ceased to admire and began to remember.” – Willa Cather
39. “Personal life becomes paler as the imaginative life becomes richer.” – Willa Cather
40. “Imagination, which is a quality writers must have, does not mean the ability to weave pretty stories out of nothing. In the right sense, imagination is a response to what is going on — a sensitiveness to which outside things appeal. It is a composition of sympathy and observation.” – Willa Cather
I’ve heard a quote, which is the one I’m looking for, that she said that she wanted to read about strong female characters but couldn’t find any, so she wrote them.