Willa Cather

"Ours is the first generation to experience the world as a unified whole."

"The real thing is not the object but the emotion it evokes."

"Every heroic act is ultimately the act of forgetting about oneself."

"What is any art but an effort to make a shout eternal?"

"The life of the arts is not necessarily found in art museums, but perhaps it is in how we live our everyday lives and our relationships with others."

"That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great."

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places."

"One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance."

"Where there is great love, there are always great wishes."

"To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent."

"If we never took chances, we would never have anything of value."

"The prettiest sight in this world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges."

"Success is never so interesting as struggle."

"I have sometimes thought that her eyes were a little too large and too dark, with something almost mournful in their depth."

"We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are here too."

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

"That is the very essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer."

"Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness."

"The mind is restless, always seeking, always unsatisfied."

"Every individual has a locus of evaluation within himself."

"The land belongs to whoever understands it best and loves it most."

"There are some things about ourselves we can't know."

"Even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea."

"Genius is talent set on fire by courage."

"The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own."

"A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves."

"The past is too much with us here, we cannot escape it."

"There is no happiness like that of being loved by the very few who truly understand you."

"We are all, in a sense, exiles, separated from the past from which we came."

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