The Art of Tetman Callis

“ ‘Natural’ death, almost by definition, means something slow, smelly and painful.” – George Orwell, “How the Poor Die” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books one does not discover how bad the majority of them are.” – George Orwell, “Confessions of a Book Reviewer” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“The planting of a tree, especially one of the long-living hardwood trees, is a gift which you can make to posterity at almost no cost and with almost no trouble, and if the tree takes root it will far outlive the visible effect of any of your other actions, good or evil.” – George Orwell, […]

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“The great age of democracy and of national self-determination was the age of the musket and the rifle. After the invention of the flintlock, and before the invention of the percussion cap, the musket was a fairly efficient weapon, and at the same time so simple that it could be produced almost anywhere. Its combination […]

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“It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following […]

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“Chiefly in England and the United States, games were built up into a heavily-financed activity, capable of attracting vast crowds and rousing savage passions, and the infection spread from country to country. It is the most violently combative sports, football and boxing, that have spread the widest. There cannot be much doubt that the whole […]

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“Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.” – George Orwell, “The Sporting Spirit” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“When the shriveled skin of the ordinary is stuffed out with meaning it satisfies the senses amazingly.” – Virginia Woolf, Orlando Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Within the island of his own nature, no man has enough resources.” – Samuel Johnson, “Skia” (trans. John Wain) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“I try not to talk about being a woman because I don’t want to be defined that way. I try not to talk about religion or politics because I am at odds with the people where I live. I try not to talk about my opinions, because who cares. I try not to talk at […]

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“Indifference to objective truth is encouraged by the sealing-off of one part of the world from another, which makes it harder and harder to discover what is actually happening. There can often be a genuine doubt about the most enormous events. . . . Probably the truth is discoverable, but the facts will be so […]

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“A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige. He may be a positive or a negative nationalist—that is, he may use his mental energy either in boosting or in denigrating—but at any rate his thoughts always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations. He sees history, especially contemporary history, […]

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“The intellect, divine as it is, and all worshipful, has a habit of lodging in the most seedy of carcasses, and often, alas, acts the cannibal among the other faculties so that often, where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to […]

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“The first thing that we demand of a wall is that it shall stand up. If it stands up, it is a good wall, and the question of what purpose it serves is separable from that. And yet even the best wall in the world deserves to be pulled down if it surrounds a concentration […]

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“In an age like our own, when the artist is an altogether exceptional person, he must be allowed a certain amount of irresponsibility, just as a pregnant woman is. Still, no one would say that a pregnant woman should be allowed to commit murder, nor would anyone make such a claim for the artist, however […]

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“Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.” – George Orwell, “Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dalí” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email […]

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“Marx’s ultimate motives may well have been envy and spite, but this does not prove that his conclusions were false.” – George Orwell, “Arthur Koestler” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“If it is rash to walk into a lion’s den unarmed, rash to navigate the Atlantic in a rowing boat, rash to stand on one foot on the top of St. Paul’s, it is still more rash to go home alone with a poet. A poet is Atlantic and lion in one. While one drowns […]

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“It is no use pretending that in an age like our own, ‘good’ poetry can have any genuine popularity. It is, and must be, the cult of a very few people, the least tolerated of the arts. Perhaps that statement needs a certain amount of qualification. True poetry can sometimes be acceptable to the mass […]

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“No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high.” – Virginia Woolf, Orlando Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email […]

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“All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have internationalist aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible.” […]

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“No one, in our time, believes in any sanction greater than military power; no one believes that it is possible to overcome force except by greater force. There is no ‘Law’, there is only power. I am not saying that that is a true belief, merely that it is the belief which all modern men […]

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“In the long run—it is important to remember that it is only in the long run—the working class remains the most reliable enemy of Fascism, simply because the working-class stands to gain most by a decent reconstruction of society. Unlike other classes or categories, it can’t be permanently bribed. To say this is not to […]

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“One of the essential experiences of war is never being able to escape from disgusting smells of human origin.” – George Orwell, “Looking Back on the Spanish War” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Dark came and I asked him what the trees do at night.‘The sick ones cry,’ he said.‘And the well?’‘The well cry for the sick.’ “ – Michael Hurley, “Saint Francis’ Last Day” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“When I’m alone, I take up my pen, intending to write. I bite my nails. I wear out my forehead. No good. Good night. The god is absent. I’d persuaded myself that I had some genius, but at the end of a line I read that I am a fool, a fool, a fool.” – […]

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“If it’s important to be sublimely good at anything, it’s above all necessary with being bad. People spit on a petty cheat, but they can’t hold back a certain respect for a grand criminal.” – Denis Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew (trans. Ian C. Johnston) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“No one, not even a pretty woman who wakes up with a pimple on her nose, is as moody as an author who threatens to outlive his reputation.” – Denis Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew (trans. Ian C. Johnston) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“It would seem that man thinks himself insufficiently supplied with faults, for he increases the number by sundry strange qualities which he affects and cultivates with such diligence that they finally become faults so natural to him that he can no longer correct them.” – François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (trans. John Heard) […]

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“Of all our failings laziness is the least known to us. None is more powerful or more malignant, although its ravages are hidden. If we examine carefully into its influence we shall find that it is invariably mistress of our sentiments, interests and pleasures. It is an octopus which holds up the greatest ships; it […]

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