Quote#Truth
To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent. A…
Quote byWilla Cather · 1873–1947
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Not Under Forty (1936), "Miss Jewett"; originally published as the Preface to The Best Stories of Sarah Orne Jewett (1925).
English (original)
To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.
— Willa Cather
More from Willa Cather
The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
There's nothing so dangerous as sitting still. You've only got one life, one youth, and you can let it slip through your fingers if you want to; nothing easier. Most people do that.
It does not matter much whom we live with in this world, but it matters a great deal whom we dream of.
The world there was the flat world of the ancients; to the east, a cornfield that stretched to daybreak; to the west, a corral that reached to the sunset; between, the conquests of peace, dearer-bought than those of war.
No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person. Two people, when they love each other, grow alike in their tastes and habits and pride, but their moral natures (whatever we may mean by that canting expression) are never …
The sun was like a great visiting presence that stimulated and took its due from all animal energy. When it flung wide its cloak and stepped down over the edge of the fields at evening, it left behind it a spent and exhausted world.