George Orwell Quotes - Page 30

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Money, money, all is money! Could you write even a penny novelette without money to put heart in you?

George Orwell

Writing, Heart, Pennies

George Orwell (1987). “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”, Harvill Secker

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The animals were happy as they had never conceived it possible to be. Every mouthful of food was an acute positive pleasure, now that it was truly their own food, produced by themselves and for themselves, not doled out to them by a grudging master.

George Orwell

Animal, Pleasure, Masters

George Orwell (2016). “Animal Farm”, p.10, Hamilton Books

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Take pleasure in the impact of one sound on another.

George Orwell

Impact, Sound, Pleasure

George Orwell (2009). “Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays”, p.227, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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How right the working classes are in their "materialism." How right they are to realize that the belly comes before the soul, not in the scale of values but in point of time!

George Orwell

Wisdom, Class, Soul

George Orwell (2009). “Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays”, p.164, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another.

George Orwell

Groups, Scarcity, Hardship

George Orwell (1983). “1984”, p.414, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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The fight against bad English is not frivolous.

George Orwell

Fighting, Frivolous

George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.157, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.

George Orwell

Brother, Wall, Moving

1949 Nineteen Eighty-Four, pt.1, ch.1.

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I managed to get my copy of Ulysses through safely this time. I rather wish I had never read it. It gives me an inferiority complex. When I read a book like that and then come back to my own work, I feel like a eunuch who has taken a course in voice production.

George Orwell

Book, Taken, Voice

George Orwell (1998). “The complete works of George Orwell”

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He was conscious of nothing except the blankness of the page in front of him, the itching of the skin above his ankle, the blaring of the music, and a slight booziness caused by the gin.

George Orwell

Writing, Skins, Ankles

George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.111, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Mrs Weaver nosed among the books, too dim-witted to grasp that they were in alphabetical order.

George Orwell

Book, Order, Weavers

George Orwell (1956). “The Orwell Reader: Fiction, Essays, and Reportage”, New York : Harcourt, Brace

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It had never occurred to him that the body of a woman of fifty, blown up to monstrous dimensions by childbearing, then hardened, roughened by work til it was coarse in the grain like an overripe turnip, could be beautiful. But is was so, and after all, he thought, why not?

George Orwell

Beautiful, Why Not, Body

George Orwell (1982). “Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four: Text, Sources, Criticism”, Harcourt

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It struck him that the truly characteristic thing about modern life was not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness. Life, if you looked about you, bore no resemblance not only to the lies that streamed out of the telescreens, but even to the ideals that the party was trying to achieve.

George Orwell

Lying, Party, Insecurity

George Orwell (2014). “1984”, p.60, Arcturus Publishing

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Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.

George Orwell

War, Party, Intelligent

George Orwell (1983). “1984”, p.416, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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[...] you can get anything in this world if you genuinely don't want it.

George Orwell

World, Want, This World

George Orwell (1976). “The Penguin complete novels of George Orwell”

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The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think worth describing in detail.

George Orwell

Thinking, Interesting, Details

George Orwell (2016). “Homage to Catalonia / Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.195, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in ... but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape.

George Orwell

Attitude, Writing, Emotional

George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.311, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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But the thing that I saw in your face no power can disinherit: No bomb that ever burst shatters the crystal spirit.

George Orwell

Power, Bombs, Faces

George Orwell (1987). “The complete works of George Orwell: Animal farm”

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You must have seen great changes since you were a young man," said Winston tentatively. The old man's pale blue eyes moved from the darts board to the bar, and from the bar to the door of the Gents ... "The beer was better," he said finally. "And cheaper! When I was a young man, mild beer - wallop we used to call it - was fourpence a pint. That was before the war, of course." "Which war was that?" said Winston. "It's all wars," said the old man vaguely. He took up his glass, and his shoulders straightened again. "'Ere's wishing you the very best of 'ealth!

George Orwell

War, Eye, Beer

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If you ask any ordinary reader which of Dickens's proletarian characters he can remember, the three he is almost certain to mention are Bill Sykes, Sam Weller and Mrs. Gamp. A burglar, a valet and a drunken midwife-not exactly a representative cross-section of the English working class.

George Orwell

Character, Class, Ordinary

George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.50, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it.

George Orwell

People, Matter, Way

George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.270, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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There is a geographical element in all belief-saying what seem profound truths in India have a way of seeming enormous platitudes in England, and vice versa . Perhaps the fundamental difference is that beneath a tropical sun individuality seems less distinct and the loss of it less important.

George Orwell

Loss, Differences, Profound

George Orwell, Peter Hobley Davison, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1999). “A kind of compulsion, 1903-1936”, Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd

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Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.

George Orwell

War, Battle, Eton

The Lion and the Unicorn pt. 1, sec. 4 (1941) SeeWellington 7

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Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.

George Orwell

Jobs, Book, Feelings

George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.289, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Pessimism is reactionary because it makes the very idea of improving the world impossible.

George Orwell

Ideas, World, Impossible

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Winston Churchill could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war.

George Orwell

Country, War, Remember

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Born: June 25, 1903
Died: January 21, 1950
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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