Willa Cather

O, Pioneers! - Willa Cather

“There is often a good deal of the child left in people who have had to grow up too soon.” (Pg 6)

“A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves.” (Pg 19)

“He felt that there was a sovereign virtue in mere bodily toil, and he rather liked to do things in the hardest way.” (Pg 22)

“She sat with the ease that belongs to persons of an essentially happy nature, who can find a comfortable spot almost anywherel who are supple, and quick in adapting themselves to circumstances.” (Pg 31)

“Sympathy always cleared his mind, and ridicule was poison to him.” (Pg 36)

“Let people go on talking as they like, and we will go on living as we think best.” (Pg 36)

“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 country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years.” (Pg 46)

“I’m cowardly about things that remind me of myself.” (Pg 47)

“I waste a lot of time pretending to people, and the joke of it is, I don’t even think I ever deceive anyone.” (Pg 47)

“You’ve seen yourself for so long in the dull minds of the people about you, that if I were to tell you how you seem to me, it would startle you. But you must see that you astonish me.” (Pg 51)

“I’ve found it sometimes pays to mend other people’s fences.” (Pg 54)

“If you take even a vine and cut it back again and again, it grows hard, like a tree.” (Pg 66)

“People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find.” (Pg 71)

“The trouble is you almost have to marry a man before you can find out the sort of wife he needs; and usually it’s exactly the sort your are not.” (Pg 77)

“She simply did not know how to give a half-hearted response.” (Pg 85)

“It’s queer what things one remembers and what things one forgets.” (Pg 94)

“He was at that height of excitement from which everything is foreshortened, from which life seems short and simple, death very near, and the soul seems to soar like an eagle.” (Pg 101)

“The heart, when it is too much alive, aches for that brown earth, and ecstacy has no fear of death.” (Pg 101)

“When the eyes of the flesh are shut, the eyes of the spirit are open. She will have a message from those who are gone, and that will bring her peace.” (Pg 110)

“I think when friends marry, they are safe.” (Pg 122)