The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “Willa Cather”

Rocky Mountain Flowers: The Daring Life and Art of Pioneering Plant Ecologist Edith Clements
Rocky Mountain Flowers: The Daring Life and Art of Pioneering Plant Ecologist Edith Clements

“There seems little doubt that the application of the principles of ecology to human affairs, whether personal, national or world-wide, would go far in solving the problems that beset us.”

read article

The Tragic Necessity of Human Life: Willa Cather on Relationships and How Our Formative Family Dynamics Imprint Us
The Tragic Necessity of Human Life: Willa Cather on Relationships and How Our Formative Family Dynamics Imprint Us

“In those simple relationships of loving husband and wife, affectionate sisters, children and grandmother, there are innumerable shades of sweetness and anguish which make up the pattern of our lives day by day.”

read article

Willa Cather on Happiness
Willa Cather on Happiness

“That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”

read article

Willa Cather on the Majesty of the Cosmos and the Capacity for Wonder That Makes Us Wonderful
Willa Cather on the Majesty of the Cosmos and the Capacity for Wonder That Makes Us Wonderful

“Jupiter and Venus both shining in the golden-rosy sky… I can’t but believe that all that majesty and all that beauty, those fated and unfailing appearances and exits, are something more than mathematics and horrible temperatures.”

read article

Art and Aliveness: Willa Cather on Attention and the Life of the Senses as the Key to Creativity
Art and Aliveness: Willa Cather on Attention and the Life of the Senses as the Key to Creativity

“Art is a matter of enjoyment through the five senses. Unless you can see the beauty all around you everywhere, and enjoy it, you can never comprehend art.”

read article

Willa Cather on Productivity vs. Creativity and the Life-Changing Advice That Made Her a Writer
Willa Cather on Productivity vs. Creativity and the Life-Changing Advice That Made Her a Writer

“It’s so foolish to live (which is always trouble enough) and not to save your soul. It’s so foolish to lose your real pleasures for the supposed pleasures of the chase — or the stock exchange.”

read article

Willa Cather on Making Art Through Troubled Times: A Moving Letter to Her Younger Brother
Willa Cather on Making Art Through Troubled Times: A Moving Letter to Her Younger Brother

“The test of one’s decency is how much of a fight one can put up after one has stopped caring, and after one has found out that one can never please the people they wanted to please.”

read article

View Full Site

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy. (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)