What was any art but 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.
Willa CatherRead
Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man. Drunkenness is merely an exaggeration. A foolish man drunk becomes maudlin; a bloody man, vicious; a coarse man, vulgar.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Alcohol amplifies a person's inherent characteristics, revealing their true nature when under its influence.
Willa Cather's quote suggests that alcohol does not alter a person's essence but instead intensifies their existing traits. In essence, one's behavior when intoxicated is a reflection of their true self, whether they become emotionally expressive, aggressive, or crude, depending on their underlying disposition.
Themes
AlcoholNatureDrunkennessBehaviorTrue Self
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion about the effects of alcohol at a community center event.
More from Willa Cather
All quotes βThat is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.
Willa CatherRead
Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale; legends and stories nestled like birds in its branches.
Willa CatherRead
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.
Willa CatherRead
The air and the earth interpenetrated in the warm gusts of spring; the soil was full of sunlight, and the sunlight full of red dust. The air one breathed was saturated with earthy smells, and the grass under foot had a reflection of the blue sky in it.
Willa CatherRead
This is reality, whether you like it or not--all those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was underneath. This is the truth.
Willa CatherRead
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Early in life, when I first saw waterlilies on the ripples of a lake, I didn't think they were flowers which grew from the water, but rather flowers which were mirrored from the shore into the lake. So many flowers grow in the silent waters of our souls, and they unfold their petals over the glaze of our consciousness: they grow from within us, but we think them reflections from the external world.
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There is all the difference in the world between the criminal's avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedience's taking the law into his own hands in open defiance. This distinction between an open violation of the law, performed in public, and a clandestine one is so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will.
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There is no perfection only life
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