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A Work-room Should Be Like An Old Shoe; No Matter How Shabby, It's Better Than A New One.
-Willa Cather
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A Work-room Should Be

Willa Cather
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A Work-room Should Be Like An Old Shoe; No Matter How Shabby, It's Better Than A New One.

Understanding the Quote: "a work-room should be like an old shoe; no matter how shabby,..."

This quote by Willa Cather reflects deeply on the theme of shoes. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Shoes, Matter, Rooms, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Willa Cather interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Willa Cather

Willa Cather is celebrated for insightful thoughts on shoes and matter. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 56000
Topic
Shoes
Matter
Rooms
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It Has Long Been A Tradition Among Novel Writers That A Book Must End By Everybody Getting Just What They Wanted, Or If The Conventional Happy Ending Was Impossible, Then It Must Be A Tragedy In Which One Or Both Should Die. In Real Life Very Few Of Us Get What We Want, Our Tragedies Don't Kill Us, But We Go On Living Them Year After Year, Carrying Them With Us Like A Scar On An Old Wound.
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I Have Sometimes Thought That His Bursts Of Imaginative Talk Were Fatal To His Poetic Gift. He Squandered Too Much In The Heat Of Personal Communication.
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Betrayed
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There Seemed To Be Nothing To See; No Fences, No Creeks Or Trees, No Hills Or Fields. If There Was A Road, I Could Not Make It Out In The Faint Starlight. There Was Nothing But Land: Not A Country At All, But The Material Out Of Which Countries Are Made.
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To Fulfil The Dreams Of One's Youth; That Is The Best That Can Happen To A Man. No Worldly Success Can Take The Place Of That.
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Men
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I Wondered If The Life That Was Right For One Was Ever Right For Two!
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Ifs
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People
Pioneers
I Kept As Still As I Could. Nothing Happened. I Did Not Expect Anything To Happen. I Was Something That Lay Under The Sun And Felt It, Like The Pumpkins, And I Did Not Want To Be Anything More. I Was Entirely Happy. Perhaps We Feel Like That When We Die And Become A Part Of Something Entire, Whether It Is Sun And Air, Or Goodness And Knowledge. At Any Rate, That Is Happiness; To Be Dissolved Into Something Complete And Great. When It Comes To One, It Comes As Naturally As Sleep.
Success
Sleep
Air
Some People's Lives Are Affected By What Happens To Their Person Or Their Property; But For Others Fate Is What Happens To Their Feelings And Their Thoughts -- That And Nothing More.
Fate
People
Feelings
Success Is Less Interesting Than Struggle. There Is Great Pleasure In The Effort.
Struggle
Interesting
Effort
In This World People Have To Pay An Extortionate Price For Any Exceptional Gift Whatever.
People
World
Pay
The Idea Of You Is A Part Of My Mind; You Influence My Likes And Dislikes, All My Tastes, Hundreds Of Times When I Don't Realize It. You Really Are A Part Of Me. In The Course Of Twenty Crowded Years One Parts With Many Illusions... I Did Not Wish To Lose The Early Ones. Some Memories Are Realities, And Are Better Than Anything That Can Ever Happen Again.
Memories
Reality
Years
Some Things Are Best Learned In Calm, Others In Storm.
Storm
Calm
What If - What If Life Itself Were The Sweetheart?
What If
Sweetheart
Ifs
She Had Certain Thoughts Which Were Like Companions, Ideas Which Were Like Older And Wiser Friends.
Ideas
Certain
Companion
Beautiful Women, Whose Beauty Meant More Than It Said... Was Their Brilliancy Always Fed By Something Coarse And Concealed? Was That Their Secret?
Beautiful
Secret
Feds
Miracles Surround Us At Every Turn If We But Sharpen Our Perceptions Of Them.
Miracle
Perception
Turns
One Summer Evening In The Year 1848, Three Cardinals And A Missionary Were Dining Together In The Gardens Of A Villa In The Sabine Hills, Overlooking Rome.
Summer
Book
Garden
Life Began For Me, When I Ceased To Admire And Began To Remember.
Love
Remember
Admire
Old Men Are Like That, You Know. It Makes Them Feel Important To Think They Are In Love With Somebody.
Inspirational Love
Men
Thinking
Yet The Summer Which Was To Change Everything Was Coming Nearer Every Day. When Boys And Girls Are Growing Up, Life Can't Stand Still, Not Even In The Quietest Of Country Towns; And They Have To Grow Up, Whether They Will Or No. That Is What Their Elders Are Always Forgetting.
Girl
Summer
Country
That Is Happiness; To Be Dissolved Into Something Complete And Great.
Happiness
Spiritual
Purpose
It Takes A Great Deal Of Experience To Become Natural.
Natural
Deals
Religion Is Different From Everything Else; Because In Religion Seeking Is Finding.
Different
Findings
Seeking
Nearly All The Escapists In The Long Past Have Managed Their Own Budget And Their Social Relations So Unsuccessfully That I Wouldn't Want Them For My Landlords, Or My Bankers, Or My Neighbors. They Were Valuable, Like Powerful Stimulants, Only When They Were Left Out Of The Social And Industrial Routine.
Powerful
Past
Long
I Like Trees Because They Seem More Resigned To The Way They Have To Live Than Other Things Do.
Nature
Tree
Way
Late One Brilliant April Afternoon Professor Lucius Wilson Stood At The Head Of Chestnut Street, Looking About Him With The Pleased Air Of A Man Of Taste Who Does Not Very Often Get To Boston.
Book
Men
Air
The Sky Was A Midnight-blue, Like Warm, Deep, Blue Water, And The Moon Seemed To Lie On It Like A Water-lily, Floating Forward With An Invisible Current.
Lying
Moon
Blue
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 Welded. The Base One Goes On Being Base, And The Noble One Noble, To The End.
Mean
Pride
Expression
Success Is Never So Interesting As Struggle
Success
Giving Up
Struggle
It Is A Tragic Hour, That Hour When We Are Finally Driven To Reckon With Ourselves, When Every Avenue Of Mental Distraction Has Been Cut Off And Our Own Life And All Its Ineffaceable Failures Closes About Us Like The Walls Of That Old Torture Chamber Of The Inquisition.
Wall
Failure
Cutting
There Are Only Two Or Three Human Stories, And They Go On Repeating Themselves As Fiercely As If They Had Never Happened Before.
Life
Wise
Niece
Pittsburgh Was Even More Vital, More Creative, More Hungry For Culture Than New York. Pittsburgh Was The Birthplace Of My Writing.
New York
Writing
Creative
Of All The Bewildering Things About A New Country, The Absence Of Human Landmarks Is One Of The Most Depressing And Disheartening.
Country
Depressing
Absence
In New Mexico, He Always Awoke A Young Man, Not Until He Arose And Began To Shave Did He Realize That He Was Growing Older. His First Consciousness Was A Sense Of The Light Dry Wind Blowing In Through The Windows, With The Fragrance Of Hot Sun And Sage-brush And Sweet Clover; A Wind That Made One's Body Feel Light And One's Heart Cry 'to-day, To-day,' Like A Child's.
Love
Sweet
Children
The Two Friends Stood For A Few Moments On The Windy Street Corner, Not Speaking A Word, As Two Travelers, Who Have Lost Their Way, Sometimes Stand And Admit Their Perplexity In Silence. (o Pioneers!)
Two Friends
Silence
Pioneers
Thirty Or Forty Years Ago, In One Those Grey Towns Along The Burlington Railroad Which Are So Much Greyer To-day Than They Were Then, There Was A House Well Know From Omaha To Denver For Its Hospitality And For A Certain Charm Of Atmosphere.
Book
Years
House
I Suppose There Were Moonless Nights And Dark Ones With But A Silver Shaving And Pale Stars In The Sky, But I Remember Them All As Flooded With The Rich Indolence Of A Full Moon.
Stars
Dark
Moon
Too Much Detail Is Apt, Like Any Other Form Of Extravagance, To Become Slightly Vulgar.
Details
Extravagance
Too Much
Every Individual Taste, Every Natural Appetite, Was Bridled By Caution. The People Asleep In Those Houses, I Thought, Tried To Live Like The Mice In Their Own Kitchens; To Make No Noise, To Leave No Trace, To Slip Over The Surface Of Things In The Dark.
Dark
People
House
[mark Twain] Is Still The Rough, Awkward, Good-natured Boy Who Swore At The Deck Hands When He Was Three Years Old. Thoroughly Likeable As A Good Fellow, But Impossible As A Man Of Letters.
Boys
Men
Hands
Old People, Who Have Felt Blows And Toil And Known The World's Hard Hand, Need, Even More Than Children Do, A Woman's Tenderness.
Children
Blow
Hands
From The Time The Englishman's Bones Harden Into Bones At All, He Makes His Skeleton A Flagstaff, And He Early Plants His Feet Like One Who Is To Walk The World And The Decks Of All The Seas.
Skeletons
Sea
Feet
People Can Be Lovers And Enemies At The Same Time, You Know.
People
Enemy
Lovers
She Had Only To Stand In The Orchard, To Put Her Hand On A Little Crab Tree And Look Up At The Apples, To Make You Feel The Goodness Of Planting And Tending And Harvesting At Last.
Autumn
Apples
Hands
From Two Ears That Had Grown Side By Side, The Grains Of One Shot Up Joyfully Into The Light, Projecting Themselves Into The Future, And The Grains From The Other Lay Still In The Earth And Rotted; And Nobody Knew Why.
Light
Two
Ears
One Cannot Divine Nor Forecast The Conditions That Will Make Happiness; One Only Stumbles Upon Them By Chance, In A Lucky Hour, At The World's End Somewhere, And Hold Fast To The Days.
Happiness
Lucky
World
A Pioneer Should Have Imagination, Should Be Able To Enjoy The Idea Of Things More Than The Things Themselves.
Should Have
Ideas
Imagination
Only A Woman, Divine, Could Know All That A Woman Can Suffer.
Suffering
Divine
Knows
The Fact That I Was A Girl Never Damaged My Ambitions To Be A Pope Or An Emperor.
Girl
Ambition
Facts
The Qualities Of A Second-rate Writer Can Easily Be Defined, But A First-rate Writer Can Only Be Experienced. It Is Just The Thing In Him Which Escapes Analysis That Makes Him First-rate.
Quality
Analysis
Firsts
It Does Not Matter Much Whom We Live With In This World, But It Matters A Great Deal Whom We Dream Of.
Dream
World
Matter
A Man Long Accustomed To Admire His Wife In General, Seldom Pauses To Admire Her In A Particular Gown Or Attitude, Unless His Attention Is Directed To Her By The Appreciative Gaze Of Another Man.
Attitude
Men
Long
Art, It Seems To Me, Should Simplify Finding What Conventions Of Form And What Detail One Can Do Without And Yet Preserve The Spirit Of The Whole - So That All That One Has Suppressed And Cut Away Is There To The Reader's Consciousness As Much As If It Were In Type On The Page.
Art
Cutting
Editing
The World Is Little, People Are Little, Human Life Is Little. There Is Only One Big Thing — Desire.
People
Desire
World
Youth, Art, Love, Dreams, True-heartedness - Why Must They Go Out Of The Summer World Into Darkness?
Summer
Dream
Art
Art Is A Concrete And Personal And Rather Childish Thing After All - No Matter What People Do To Graft It Into Science And Make It Sociological And Psychological; It Is No Good At All Unless It Is Let Alone To Be Itself - A Game Of Make-believe, Or Re-production, Very Exciting And Delightful To People Who Have An Ear For It Or An Eye For It.
Art
Believe
Eye
Let People Go On Talking As They Like, And We Will Go On Living As We Think Best.
Thinking
Talking
People
Sometimes A Neighbor Whom We Have Disliked A Lifetime For His Arrogance And Conceit Lets Fall A Single Commonplace Remark That Shows Us Another Side, Another Man, Really; A Man Uncertain, And Puzzled, And In The Dark Like Ourselves.
Forgiveness
Fall
Dark
All The Intelligence And Talent In The World Can't Make A Singer. The Voice Is A Wild Thing. It Can't Be Bred In Captivity. It Is A Sport, Like The Silver Fox. It Happens.
Sports
Voice
Captivity
A Work-room Should Be Like An Old Shoe; No Matter How Shabby, It's Better Than A New One.
Shoes
Matter
Rooms
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