“The great pines stand at a considerable distance from each other. Each tree grows alone, murmurs alone, thinks alone. They do not intrude upon each other.”

—  Willa Cather , book The Song of the Lark

Part IV, ch. 1
The Song of the Lark (1915)
Context: The great pines stand at a considerable distance from each other. Each tree grows alone, murmurs alone, thinks alone. They do not intrude upon each other. The Navajos are not much in the habit of giving or of asking help. Their language is not a communicative one, and they never attempt an interchange of personality in speech. Over their forests there is the same inexorable reserve. Each tree has its exalted power to bear.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The great pines stand at a considerable distance from each other. Each tree grows alone, murmurs alone, thinks alone. T…" by Willa Cather?
Willa Cather photo
Willa Cather 99
American writer and novelist 1873–1947

Related quotes

Barack Obama photo

“That’s where courage comes from -- when we turn not from each other, or on each other, but towards one another, and we find that we do not walk alone. That’s where courage comes from.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, "Let Freedom Ring" Ceremony (August 2013)
Context: The March on Washington teaches us that we are not trapped by the mistakes of history; that we are masters of our fate. But it also teaches us that the promise of this nation will only be kept when we work together. We’ll have to reignite the embers of empathy and fellow feeling, the coalition of conscience that found expression in this place 50 years ago. And I believe that spirit is there, that truth force inside each of us. I see it when a white mother recognizes her own daughter in the face of a poor black child. I see it when the black youth thinks of his own grandfather in the dignified steps of an elderly white man. It’s there when the native-born recognizing that striving spirit of the new immigrant; when the interracial couple connects the pain of a gay couple who are discriminated against and understands it as their own. That’s where courage comes from -- when we turn not from each other, or on each other, but towards one another, and we find that we do not walk alone. That’s where courage comes from.

Hillary Clinton photo

“None of us gets through life alone. We all have to look out for each other and lift each other up.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech in Orlando, Florida (September 21, 2016)

Baruch Spinoza photo

“Bruno and Spinoza are to be entirely excepted. Each stands by himself and alone”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Arthur Schopenhauer, in The World as Will and Representation (1818; 1844), Vol. I, p. 422, n. 2
Context: [From Schopenhauer's assessments of other philosophers] Bruno and Spinoza are to be entirely excepted. Each stands by himself and alone; and they do not belong either to their age or to their part of the globe, which rewarded the one with death, and the other with persecution and ignominy. Their miserable existence and death in this Western world are like that of a tropical plant in Europe. The banks of the Ganges were their spiritual home; there, they would have led a peaceful and honoured life among men of like mind.

Robert Hunter (author) photo

“The entire world would be broken into atoms—each an individualist standing alone.”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 74-75
Context: Associated production would be rendered impossible. Profit, rent, and interest would be no more. There would be no diversified division of labor. Cities and industrial communities would dwindle and disappear. Society as a whole would return... to the actual poverty of an agricultural and handicraft age. A community of Indians in America before the invasion of the whites had as much social organization as Tolstoy seems to have felt necessary for mankind. "The Anarchists are right in everything..." he writes, except "only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution." The entire world would be broken into atoms—each an individualist standing alone.

Jean Baudrillard photo

“It is the saddest sight in the world. Sadder than destitution, sadder than the beggar is the man who eats alone in public. Nothing more contradicts the laws of man or beast, for animals always do each other the honour of sharing or disputing each other’s food. He who eats alone is dead”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

New York (p. 15)
1980s, America (1986)
Context: Yet there is a certain solitude like no other - that of the man preparing his meal in public on a wall, or on the hood of his car, or along a fence, alone. You see that all the time here. It is the saddest sight in the world. Sadder than destitution, sadder than the beggar is the man who eats alone in public. Nothing more contradicts the laws of man or beast, for animals always do each other the honour of sharing or disputing each other’s food. He who eats alone is dead (but not he who drinks alone. Why is this?).

Henri Barbusse photo

“We do not die. Each human being is alone in the world.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XIV
Context: We do not die. Each human being is alone in the world. It seems absurd, contradictory to say this, and yet it is so. But there are many human beings like me. No, we cannot say that. In saying that, we set ourselves outside the truth in a kind of abstraction. All we can say is: I am alone.
And that is why we do not die.

Henry Adams photo

“…each individual appeared satisfied to stand alone. It seemed a sign of force; yet to stand alone is quite natural when one has no passions; still easier when one has no pains.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“There’s people all over these parts, and maybe beyond, who think, as you said, that nobody can be wise alone. So these people try to hold to each other.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

“The Finder” (p. 43)
Earthsea Books, Tales from Earthsea (2001)

Related topics