Home > Work > O Pioneers! (Great Plains Trilogy, #1)
41 " You know that my spells come from God, and that I would not harm any living creature. You believe that every one should worship God in the way revealed to him. But that is not the way of this country. The way here is for all to do alike. "
― Willa Cather , O Pioneers! (Great Plains Trilogy, #1)
42 " She walked slowly down through the orchard, where the evening air was heavy with the smell of wild cotton. The fresh, salty scent of the wild roses had given way before this more powerful perfume of midsummer. Wherever those ashes-of-rose balls hung on their milky stalks, the air about them was saturated with their breath. "
43 " The right thing is usually just what everybody don't do. "
44 " We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it -- for a little while. "
45 " I could pick out exactly the right sort of woman for Frank—now. The trouble is you almost have to marry a man before you can find out the sort of wife he needs; and usually it's exactly the sort you are not. Then what are you going to do about it?” she asked candidly. "
46 " Her training had all been toward the end of making her proficient in what she had undertaken to do. Her personal life, her own realization of herself, was almost asubconscious existence; like an underground river that came to the surface only here and there, at intervals months apart, and then sank again to flow on under her own fields. Nevertheless, the underground stream was there, and it was because she had so much personality to put into her enterprises and succeeded in putting it into them so completely, that her affairs prospered better than those of her neighbors. "
47 " He was ready to give up, he felt. He did not know how it had come about, but he was quite willing to go deep under his fields and rest, where the plow could not find him. He was tired of making mistakes. He was content to leave the tangle to other hands; "
48 " The heart, when it is too much alive, aches for that brown earth, and ecstasy has no fear of death. "
49 " We have no house, no place, no people of our own. We live in the streets, in the parks, in the theatres. We sit in restaurants and concert halls and look about at the hundreds of our own kind and shudder. "
50 " Isn't it queer. There are only two or three human stories and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before. Like the larks in this country that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years. "
51 " Isn't it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years "
52 " Isn't it queer: there are only two or three human stories and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the Larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years. "
53 " It is like an iron country, and the spirit is oppressed by its rigor and melancholy. One could easily believe that in that dead landscape the germs of life and fruitfulness were extinct forever. "
54 " You see we have kept up the old path, Carl. It has been so nice for me to feel that there was a friend at the other end of it again. "
55 " the way, they were "
56 " The branches had become so hard that they wounded your hand if you but tried to break a twig. And yet, down under the frozen crusts, at the roots of the trees, the secret of life was still safe, warm as the blood in one's heart; and the spring would come again! "
57 " dinner, were keeping well behind their frosty windows. The children were all in school, and there was nobody "
58 " of an essentially happy nature, who can find a comfortable spot almost anywhere; who are supple, and quick in adapting themselves to circumstances. "
59 " The winter twilight was fading. The sick man heard his wife strike a match in the kitchen, and the light of a lamp glimmered through the cracks of the door. It seemed like a light shining far away. He turned painfully in his bed and looked at his white hands, with all the work gone out of them. He was ready to give up, he felt. He did not know how it had come about, but he was quite willing to go deep under his fields and rest, where the plow could not find him. He was tired of making mistakes. He was content to leave the tangle to other hands. "
60 " Do you feel at peace with the world here? I think we shall be very happy. I haven't any fears. I think when friends marry, they are safe. We don't suffer like—those young ones. "