Only the stupid and the phlegmatic should teach.

Sourced, My Mortal Enemy (1926)

Part II, Ch. 1

Other Willa Cather Quotes

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 — so that all that one has suppressed and cut away is there to the reader’s consciousness as much as if it were in type on the page. - View Quote Details on Art, it seems to me, should simplify. That, indeed, is…
Nearly all the Escapists in the long past have managed their own budget and their social relations so unsuccessfully that I wouldn’t want them for my landlords, or my bankers, or my neighbors. They were valuable, like powerful stimulants, only when they were left out of the social and industrial routine. - View Quote Details on Nearly all the Escapists in the long past have managed…
Religion is different from everything else; because in religion seeking is finding. - View Quote Details on Religion is different from everything else; because in religion seeking…
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…
Father Latour judged that, just as it was the white man’s way to assert himself in any landscape, to change it, make it over a little (at least to leave some mark of memorial of his sojourn), it was the Indian’s way to pass through a country without disturbing anything; to pass and leave no trace, like fish through the water, or birds through the air.
It was the Indian manner to vanish into the landscape, not to stand out against it. The Hopi villages that were set upon rock mesas were made to look like the rock on which they sat, were imperceptible at a distance. - View Quote Details on Father Latour judged that, just as it was the white…
Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is. - View Quote Details on Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a…
The windy springs and the blazing summers, one after another, had enriched and mellowed that flat tableland; all the human effort that had gone into it was coming back in long, sweeping lines of fertility. The changes seemed beautiful and harmonious to me; it was like watching the growth of a great man or of a great idea. I recognized every tree and sandbank and rugged draw. I found that I remembered the conformation of the land as one remembers the modelling of human faces. - View Quote Details on The windy springs and the blazing summers, one after another,…
Art and religion (they are the same thing, in the end, of course) have given man the only happiness he has ever had. - View Quote Details on Art and religion (they are the same thing, in the…
The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own. - View Quote Details on The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no…
All the intelligence and talent in the world can’t make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can’t be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens. - View Quote Details on All the intelligence and talent in the world can’t make…