A Lost Lady Quotes

“Her husband had archaic ideas about jewels; a man bought them for his wife in acknowledgement of things he could not gracefully utter.”
― Willa Cather, A Lost Lady

“[S]he had always the power of suggesting things much lovelier than herself, as the perfume of a single flower may call up the whole sweetness of spring.”
― Willa Cather, A Lost Lady

“He came to be very glad that he had known her, and that she had had a hand in breaking him in to life. He has known pretty women and clever ones since then,-- but never one like her, as she was in her best days. Her eyes, when they laughed for a moment into one`s own, seemed to promise a wild delight that he has not found in life. "I know where it is," they seemed to say, "I could show you!”
― Willa Cather, A Lost Lady

“He had seen the end of an era, the sunset of the pioneer. He had come upon it when already its glory was nearly spent. So in the buffalo times a traveller used to come upon the embers of a hunter's fire on the prairie, after the hunter was up and gone; the coals would be trampled out, but the ground was warm, and the flattened grass where he had slept and where his pony had grazed, told the story.
This was the very end of the road-making West; the men who had put plains and mountains under the iron harness were old; some were poor, and even the successful ones were hunting for a rest and a brief reprieve from death. It was already gone, that age; nothing could ever bring it back. The taste and smell and song of it, the visions those men had seen in the air and followed, - these he had caught in a kind of afterglow in their own faces, - and this would always be his.”
― Willa Cather, A Lost Lady

“Tears flashed into her eyes. "That's very dear of you. It's sweet to be remembered when one is away." In her voice there was the heart-breaking sweetness one sometimes hears in lovely, gentle old songs.”
― Willa Cather, A Lost Lady

“Under the bluffs that overhung the marsh he came upon thickets of wild roses, with flaming buds, just beginning to open. Where they had opened, their petals were stained with that burning rose-colour which is always gone by noon, -- a dye made of sunlight and morning and moisture, so intense that it cannot possibly last. . . must fade, like ecstasy. Niel took out his knife and began to cut the stiff stems, crowded with red thorns.
He would make a bouquet for a lovely lady; a bouquet gathered off the cheeks of the morning. . . these roses, only half awake, in the defencelessness of utter beauty.”
― Willa Cather, A Lost Lady

“Oh, but it is bleak!” she murmured. “Suppose we should have to stay here all next winter, too,… and the next! What will become of me, Niel?” There was fear, unmistakable fright in her voice. “You see there is nothing for me to do. I get no exercise. I don’t skate; we didn’t in California, and my ankles are weak. I’ve always danced in the winter, there’s plenty of dancing at Colorado Springs. You wouldn’t believe how I miss it. I shall dance till I’m eighty.… I’ll be the waltzing grandmother! It’s good for me, I need it.” They”
― Willa Cather, A Lost Lady

“Niel felt tonight that the right man could still save her, even now. She was still her own indomitable self, going through her old part,--but only the stage hands were left to listen to her. All those who had shared in fine undertakings and bright occasions were gone.”
― Willa Cather, A Lost Lady

“I could feel his heart pump and his muscles strain," she said, "when he balanced himself and me on the rocks. I knew that if we fell, we’d go together; he would never drop me".”
― Willa Cather, A Lost Lady

“The world did not seem over-bright to young people just then.”
― Willa Cather, A Lost Lady

“Even the hardest and coldest of his friends, a certain narrow-faced Lincoln banker, became animated when he took her hand, tried to meet the gay challenge in her eyes and to reply cleverly to the droll word of greeting on her lips.”
― Willa Cather, A Lost Lady

“It was what he most held against Mrs. Forrester; that she was not willing to immolate herself, like the widow of all these great men, and die with the pioneer period to which she belonged; that she preferred life on any terms. In the end, Niel went away without bidding her good-bye. He went away with weary contempt for her in his heart.”
― Willa Cather, A Lost Lady