Quotations from Cather
on other Web pages

A compendium of quotations by Cather on the Web, collected here with links to the sites in which they were found (many of these are now dead).

Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again. -- deep lines
There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as as if they had never happened before. -- David Clark; Robert's Favorite Quotes; A review of Belmondo's film "Les Miserables"; ReBoot cartoon; Heliotrope [Clearly the favorite Cather quotation that I've found on the Web. People keep repeating it as fiercely . . . ]
No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person. -- Quotations, selected by topic
There are all those early memories, one cannot get another set. -- The Virginia Pilot
That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great. -- Thoughts
I tell you there is such a thing as creative hate. The Song of the Lark -- The World of Hate [!]
The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman. O Pioneers! -- The Family Historian
Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family - but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything. -- Literary Thoughts on Friendship
There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made. -- The Homesteader's World
The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power but upon our perception being made finer, so that coming suddenly near us from afar off, for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what there is about us always. Death Comes for the Archbishop -- Sacred Space in Ordinary Times; Expect a Miracle (August 11-16)
Where there is great love there are always miracles. -- Quotations - 'C' Authors; Quotes by Women; Rockport Institute; Famous Quotes
Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. -- The View From Here children's activity.
The history of every country begins in the heart of a man and a woman... And now the old story has begun to write itself over again. Isn't it queer; there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this county, that have been singing the same five notes over and over for thousands of years. -- Artist's Repertory Theatre.
. . . for that wind that made one a boy again...One could breathe that only on the bright edges of the world, on the great grass plains or the sagebrush desert. Death Comes for the Archbishop -- The Earth's Drylands page.
Art, it seems to me, should simplify. That, indeed, is very nearly the whole of the higher artistic process; finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole. -- Modula interfaces.
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. -- Universe Newsletter; 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said
Human love was a wonderful thing, he told himself, and it was most wonderful where it had least to gain. One of Ours [I can't help but noting that this quote, in context, seems to be written with profound irony, as wonderful as the sentiment might be] -- Quote du Jour
Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand -- a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods -- or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values. -- Breakfast Quotes
I tried to go to sleep, but the jolting made me bite my tongue, and I soon began to ache all over. When the straw settled down, I had a hard bed. Cautiously I slipped from under the buffalo hide, got up on my knees and peered over the side of the wagon. There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made. No, there was nothing but land--slightly undulating, I knew, because often our wheels ground against the brake as we went down into a hollow and lurched up again on the other side. I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man's jurisdiction. I had never before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven all there was of it. I did not believe that my dead father and mother were watching me from up there; they would still be looking for me at the sheep-fold down by the creek or along the white road that lead to the mountain pastures. I had left even their spirits behind me. The wagon jolted on, carrying me I knew not wither. I don't think I was homesick. If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers that night: here, I felt, what would be would be. My Antonia -- Cool quotes