In other searchings it might be the object of the…

In other searchings it might be the object of the quest that brought satisfaction, or it might be something incidental that one got on the way; but in religion, desire was fulfilment, it was the seeking itself that rewarded.

Sourced, My Mortal Enemy (1926)

Other Willa Cather Quotes

No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person. Two people, when they love each other, grow alike in their tastes and habits and pride, but their moral natures (whatever we may mean by that canting expression) are never welded. The base one goes on being base, and the noble one noble, to the end. - View Quote Details on No one can build his security upon the nobleness of…
People can be lovers and enemies at the same time, you know. We were… A man and woman draw apart from that long embrace, and see what they have done to each other… In age we lose everything; even the power to love. - View Quote Details on People can be lovers and enemies at the same time,…
Every artist makes himself born. It is very much harder than the other time, and longer. - View Quote Details on Every artist makes himself born. It is very much harder…
Beautiful women, whose beauty meant more than it said… was their brilliancy always fed by something coarse and concealed? Was that their secret? - View Quote Details on Beautiful women, whose beauty meant more than it said… was…
She used to drag her mattress beside her low window and lie awake for a long while, vibrating with excitement, as a machine vibrates from speed. Life rushed in upon her through that window— or so it seemed. In reality, of course, life rushes from within, not from without. There is no work of art so big or so beautiful that it was not once all contained in some youthful body, like this one which lay on the floor in the moonlight, pulsing with ardor and anticipation. - View Quote Details on She used to drag her mattress beside her low window…
I am sure I do not know why the beauty of Monte Carlo should not satisfy more than it does. The bluest of all seas is nowhere bluer than when you see it between the marble balustrades of the long white terrace before the casino, palms are nowhere greener than in that high garden which the mountain screen from every unkind breath, no colours could be more rich and various than those of the red and purple Alps that tower up behind the town, on whose summit such violent thunderstorms gather and break. But for me, at least, there was not at all the pleasure I had anticipated in this dazzling white and blue, these feathery palms and ragged Alps….I had a continual restless feeling that there was nothing at all real about Monte Carlo; that the sea was too blue to be wet, the casino too white to be anything but pasteboard, and that from their very greenness the palms must be cotton…. in atmosphere and spirit the entire kingdom of Monaco is an extension of the casino. - View Quote Details on I am sure I do not know why the beauty…
Even in harmonious families there is this double life: the group life, which is the one we can observe in our neighbour’s household, and, underneath, another — secret and passionate and intense — which is the real life that stamps the faces and gives character to the voices of our friends. Always in his mind each member of these social units is escaping, running away, trying to break the net which circumstances and his own affections have woven about him. - View Quote Details on Even in harmonious families there is this double life: the…
That irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand. - View Quote Details on That irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by…
I tell you there is no such thing as creative hate! - View Quote Details on I tell you there is no such thing as creative…
What was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself — life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose? - View Quote Details on What was any art but an effort to make a…