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Willa Cather

12 quotes

Willa Cather is the kind of thinker who lets the words do the talking — and they talk volumes. Willa Cather's observations on Great are as sharp as their thoughts on Valentinesday, revealing genuine breadth of mind. Our collection holds 14 quotes from Willa Cather, each offering a different angle on Great, Valentinesday, Power, Nature, and Love. Perhaps their most recognizable line: "Where there is great love, there are always wishes."

“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

Intelligence

All Quotes by Willa Cather

“That is happiness to be dissolved into something complete and great.”

— Willa Cather

Happiness

“The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.”

— Willa Cather

Great

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

— Willa Cather

Age

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

— Willa Cather

Best

“It does not matter much whom we live with in this world, but it matters a great deal whom we dream of.”

— Willa Cather

Great

“The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.”

— Willa Cather

Power

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

— Willa Cather

Great

“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

Intelligence

“I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived.”

— Willa Cather

Death

“Only solitary men know the full joys of frienship. Others have their family but to a solitary and an exile, his friends are everything.”

— Willa Cather

Family

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

— Willa Cather

Nature

“The condition every art requires is, not so much freedom from restriction, as freedom from adulteration and from the intrusion of foreign matter.”

— Willa Cather

Freedom