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Too Much Detail Is Apt, Like Any Other Form Of Extravagance, To Become Slightly Vulgar.
-Willa Cather
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Too Much Detail Is

Willa Cather
...
Too Much Detail Is Apt, Like Any Other Form Of Extravagance, To Become Slightly Vulgar.

Understanding the Quote: "too much detail is apt, like any other form of extravagance, to..."

This quote by Willa Cather reflects deeply on the theme of details. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Details, Extravagance, Too Much, 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 details and extravagance. 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.

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Topic
Details
Extravagance
Too Much
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Grace
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Years
House
When The Eyes Of The Flesh Are Shut, The Eyes Of The Spirit Are Open.
Eye
Flesh
Spirit
Every American Travelling In England Gets His Own Individual Sport Out Of The Toy Passenger And Freight Trains And The Tiny Locomotives, With Their Faint, Indignant, Tiny Whistle. Especially In Western England One Wonders How The Business Of A Nation Can Possibly Be Carried On By Means So Insufficient.
Sports
Mean
Tiny
In Little Towns, Lives Roll Along So Close To One Another; Loves And Hates Beat About, Their Wings Almost Touching.
Hate
Wings
Touching
Ah! The Terror And The Delight Of That Moment When First We Fear Ourselves! Until Then We Have Not Lived.
Delight
Firsts
Moments
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
The Air Was Cool Enough To Make The Warm Sun Pleasant On One's Back And Shoulders, And So Clear That The Eye Could Follow A Hawk Up And Up, Into The Blazing Blue Depths Of The Sky.
Eye
Air
Blue
There Was A New Kind Of Strength In The Gravity Of Her Face, And Her Colors Still Gave Her That Look Of Deep-seated Health And Ardor.
Color
Looks
Faces
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
Most Publishers, Like Most Writers, Are Ruined By Their Successes.
Ruined
Publishers
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
There Is Often A Good Deal Of The Child Left In People Who Have Had To Grow Up Too Soon.
Children
Growing Up
People
Religion Is Different From Everything Else; Because In Religion Seeking Is Finding.
Different
Findings
Seeking
Old Men Are Like That, You Know. It Makes Them Feel Important To Think They Are In Love With Somebody.
Inspirational Love
Men
Thinking
The Summer Moon Hung Full In The Sky. For The Time Being It Was The Great Fact Of The World.
Summer
Moon
Sky
Now I Understood That The Same Road Was To Bring Us Together Again. Whatever We Had Missed, We Possessed Together The Precious, The Incommunicable Past.
Past
Together Again
Understood
Let Your Fiction Grow Out Of The Land Beneath Your Feet.
Land
Feet
Fiction
I Like Trees Because They Seem More Resigned To The Way They Have To Live Than Other Things Do. I Feel As If This Tree Knows Everything I Ever Think Of When I Sit Here. When I Come Back To It, I Never Have To Remind It Of Anything; I Begin Just Where I Left Off.
Thinking
Tree
Way
In Other Searchings It Might Be The Object Of The Quest That Brought Satisfaction, Or It Might Be Something Incidental That One Got On The Way; But In Religion, Desire Was Fulfilment, It Was The Seeking Itself That Rewarded.
Desire
Quests
Might
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 Air And The Earth Interpenetrated In The Warm Gusts Of Spring; The Soil Was Full Of Sunlight, And The Sunlight Full Of Red Dust. The Air One Breathed Was Saturated With Earthy Smells, And The Grass Under Foot Had A Reflection Of The Blue Sky In It.
Art
Spring
Reflection
One January Day, Thirty Years Ago, The Little Town Of Hanover, Anchored On A Windy Nebraska Tableland, Was Trying Not To Be Blown Away.
Book
Years
Trying
Thea Was Still Under The Belief That Public Opinion Could Be Placated; That If You Clucked Often Enough, The Hens Would Mistake You For One Of Themselves.
Mistake
Thinking
Public Opinion
The Voice Is A Wild Thing. It Can't Be Bred In Captivity.
Voice
Captivity
Wild Things
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
Hunger Is A Powerful Incentive To Introspection.
Powerful
Incentives
Hunger
Sometimes I Wonder Why God Ever Trusts Talent In The Hands Of Women, They Usually Make Such An Infernal Mess Of It. I Think He Must Do It As A Sort Of Ghastly Joke.
Thinking
Hands
Talent
Youth, Art, Love, Dreams, True-heartedness - Why Must They Go Out Of The Summer World Into Darkness?
Summer
Dream
Art
There Was Only - Spring Itself, The Throb Of It, The Light Restlessness, The Vital Essence Of It Everywhere; In The Sky, In The Swift Clouds, In The Pale Sunshine, And In The Warm High Wind - Rising Suddenly, Sinking Suddenly, Impulsive ... If I Had Been Tossed Down Blindfold On That Red Prairie, I Should Have Known That It Was Spring.
Spring
Sunshine
Clouds
That Is Happiness; To Be Dissolved Into Something Complete And Great.
Happiness
Spiritual
Purpose
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
New Things Are Always Ugly.
Ugly
New Things
Newness
Freedom So Often Means That One Isn't Needed Anywhere.
Mean
Needed
Sometimes Falling In Love May Look Like Pure Madness To Those Not Experiencing It But That's Only Because They're Not Involved. Just Because Other People Don't Understand Your Feelings Doesn't Mean They're Not Real Or They're Not Important. You Have To Trust Yourself. Feel What You Feel And Don't Worry About Anyone Else. Love Is About You And Your Significant Other, Remember That.
Falling In Love
Real
Mean
I Had Killed A Big Snake. I Was Now A Big Fellow.
Snakes
Bigs
Fellows
In This World People Have To Pay An Extortionate Price For Any Exceptional Gift Whatever.
People
World
Pay
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
Some Memories Are Realities, And Are Better Than Anything That Can Ever Happen To One Again.
Memories
Reality
Moments
The End Is Nothing; The Road Is All.
Life
Ends
The Prayers Of All Good People Are Good.
Prayer
People
Good People
The Heart Of Another Is A Dark Forest, Always, No Matter How Close It Has Been To One's Own.
Love
Nature
Heart
For Ever And Anon The Soul Becomes Weary Of The Conventions That Are Not Of It, And With A Single Stroke Shatters The Civilized Lies With Which It Is Unable To Cope, And The Strong Arm Reaches Out And Takes By Force What It Cannot Win By Cunning.
Strong
Lying
Winning
Prayers Said By Good People Are Always Good Prayers
Prayer
People
Said
I Wondered If The Life That Was Right For One Was Ever Right For Two!
Two
Ifs
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
When We Look Back, The Only Things We Cherish Are Those Which In Some Way Met Our Original Want; The Desire Which Formed In Us In Early Youth, Undirected, And Of Its Own Accord.
Desire
Looks
Want
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
Even The Wicked Get Worse Than They Deserve.
Fate
Punishment
Wicked
When People Ask Me If It Has Been A Hard Or Easy Road, I Always Answer With The Same Quotation, The End Is Nothing, The Road Is All.willa Cather
People
Answers
Easy
[some] People Really Expect The Passion Of Love To Fill And Gratify Every Need Of Life, Whereas Nature Only Intended That It Should Meet One Of Many Demands. They Insist On Making It Stand For All The Emotional Pleasures Of Life And Art; Expecting An Individual And Self-limited Passion To Yield Infinite Variety, Pleasure, And Distraction, And To Contribute To Their Lives What The Arts And The Pleasurable Exercise Of The Intellect Gives To Less Limited And Less Intense Idealists.
Art
Passion
Exercise
A Watch Is The Most Essential Part Of A Lecture.
Essentials
Watches
Lectures
If The Street Life, Not The Whitechapel Street Life, But That Of The Common But So-called Respectable Part Of Town Is In Any City More Gloomy, More Ugly, More Grimy, More Cruel Than In London, I Certainly Don't Care To See It. Sometimes It Occurs To One That Possibly All The Failures Of This Generation, The World Over, Have Been Suddenly Swept Into London, For The Streets Are A Restless, Breathing, Malodorous Pageant Of The Seedy Of All Nations.
Breathing
Cities
This Generation
Nothing Mattered ... But Writing Books, And Living The Kind Of Life That Made It Possible To Write Them.
Book
Writing
Kind
Men Are All Right For Friends, But As Soon As You Marry Them They Turn Into Cranky Old Fathers, Even The Wild Ones.
Father
Men
Cranky
Wherever Humanity Has Made That Hardest Of All Starts And Lifted Itself Out Of Mere Brutality Is A Sacred Spot.
Humanity
Brutality
Sacred
Miracles Surround Us At Every Turn If We But Sharpen Our Perceptions Of Them.
Miracle
Perception
Turns
No One Can Build His Security Upon The Nobleness Of Another Person.
Women
Self Esteem
Persons
It's All Very Well To Tell Us To Forgive Our Enemies; Our Enemies Can Never Hurt Us Very Much. But Oh, What About Forgiving Our Friends?
Inspiring
Friends
Hurt
Life Began For Me, When I Ceased To Admire And Began To Remember.
Love
Remember
Admire
I've Seen It Before. There Are Women Who Spread Ruin Through No Fault Of Theirs, Just By Being Too Beautiful, Too Ful Of Life And Love. They Can't Help It. Poeple Come To Them As People Go To A Warm Fire In Winter.
Beautiful
Life And Love
Winter
William Tavener Never Heeded Ominous Forecasts In The Domestic Horizon, And He Never Looked For A Storm Until It Broke.
Personality
Storm
Horizon
Every Artist Makes Herself Born. You Must Bring The Artist Into The World Yourself.
Creativity
Artist
World
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