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Shawords

Quote#Freedom

This guarded mode of existence was like living under a tyranny.…

Quote byWilla Cather · 1873–1947

Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: My Antonia (1918), Book II, Ch. 12.

English (original)

This guarded mode of existence was like living under a tyranny. People's speech, their voices, their very glances, became furtive and repressed. 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.

— Willa Cather

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