Willa Cather

Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

He had the gift of simple and moving expression. Because he talked so little, his words had a peculiar force; they were not worn dull from constant use.

If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out.

Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.

There are men who feel more at their ease when they stand up before another man who threatens their lives with sword or pistol than in the presence of a woman

it would be much better to do it by letter, and not to utter the words that should stab her to the heart

his first day on the battlefield of civilization in Paris

deal with the world as it deserves

The more cold-blooded your calculations, the further you will go

Yet, if you have a heart, lock it carefully away like a treasure; do not let any one suspect it, or you will be lost; you would cease to be the executioner, you would take the victim’s place. And if ever you should love, never let your secret escape you! Trust no one until you are very sure of the heart to which you open your heart. Learn to mistrust every one; take every precaution for the sake of the love which does not exist as yet