W. H. Auden Quotes About Suffering

Quotes about: Suffering

• The truly tragic kind of suffering is the kind produced and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instead of making him better, it makes him worse and when he dies he is not reconciled to the law but defiant, that is, damned. Lear is not a tragic hero, Othello is.

  W. H. Auden

  Hero, Law, Suffering

  "Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("The Greeks and Us"), (p. 21), 1973.

• It's better to say, 'I'm suffering,' than to say, 'This landscape is ugly.

  W. H. Auden

  Suffering, Criticism, Ugly

• Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master's commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too personal style.

  W. H. Auden

  Thinking, Style, Suffering

• Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice.

  W. H. Auden

  Selfish, Stupid, Voice

• About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; How well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.

  W. H. Auden

  Suffering, Sorrow, Window

  "Musee des Beaux Arts" l. 1 (1940)

• About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters.

  W. H. Auden

  Suffering, Masters

  "Musee des Beaux Arts" l. 1 (1940)

• The habit-forming pain,
  Mismanagement and grief:
  We must suffer them all again.

  W. H. Auden

  Pain, Grief, Suffering

  W. H. Auden, “September 1, 1939”

• Our sufferings and weaknesses, in so far as they are personal, are of no literary interest whatsoever. They are only interesting in so far as we can see them as typical of the human condition.

  W. H. Auden

  Writing, Interesting, Suffering

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