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
People live through such pain only once. Pain comes again—but it finds a tougher surface.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that while pain may recur, individuals become more resilient each time they face it.
Willa Cather's quote reflects the idea that the experience of pain is a transformative process. Each encounter with suffering strengthens an individual's emotional resilience, likening the human capacity to endure to a surface that toughens with repeated exposure. This metaphor encourages acceptance of life's challenges, emphasizing personal growth and fortitude gained through adversity.
Themes
PainResilienceGrowthStrengthSuffering
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about overcoming hardships, one might reference this quote to highlight personal growth.
More from Willa Cather
All quotes →That 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
Similar quotes
Some read for style, and some for argument: one has little care about the sentiment, he observes only how it is expressed; another regards not the conclusion, but is diligent to mark how it is inferred; they read for other purposes than the attainment of practical knowledge; and are no more likely to grow wise by an examination of a treatise of moral prudence, than an architect to inflame his devotion by considering attentively the proportions of a temple.
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It has forever been thus: So long as men write what they think, then all of the other freedoms - all of them - may remain intact. And it is then that writing becomes a weapon of truth, an article of faith, an act of courage.
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Great healers, people of divine realization, do not cure by chance but by exact knowledge.
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What care I if it be "wild and improbable" and "lacking in literary art"? I refuse to be any longer hampered by such canons of criticism. The one essential thing I demand of a book is that it should interest me. If it does, I forgive it every other fault.
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Talent, will and genius are natural phenomena like the lake, the volcano, the mountain, the wind, the star, the cloud.
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Cleverness is a burden after that. You are supposed to settle down and be a good person, raise your children, and be good to your friends, which you may not have been back when you were clever.
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