“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you—even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent—and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.” – George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”
Category: Lit & Crit
“Much of what goes by the name of pleasure is simply an effort to destroy consciousness. If one started by asking, what is man? what are his needs? how can he best express himself? one would discover that merely having the power to avoid work and live one’s life from birth to death in electric light and to the tune of tinned music is not a reason for doing so. Man needs warmth, society, leisure, comfort and security: he also needs solitude, creative work and the sense of wonder. If he recognised this he could use the products of science and industrialism eclectically, applying always the same test: does this make me more human or less human? He would then learn that the highest happiness does not lie in relaxing, resting, playing poker, drinking and making love simultaneously. And the instinctive horror which all sensitive people feel at the progressive mechanisation of life would be seen not to be a mere sentimental archaism, but to be fully justified. For man only stays human by preserving large patches of simplicity in his life, while the tendency of many modern inventions—in particular the film, the radio and the aeroplane—is to weaken his consciousness, dull his curiosity, and, in general, drive him nearer to the animals.” – George Orwell, “Pleasure Spots”
“ ‘Natural’ death, almost by definition, means something slow, smelly and painful.” – George Orwell, “How the Poor Die”
“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”
“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, “A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray”
“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”
“When the shriveled skin of the ordinary is stuffed out with meaning it satisfies the senses amazingly.” – Virginia Woolf, Orlando
“Within the island of his own nature, no man has enough resources.” – Samuel Johnson, “Skia” (trans. John Wain)
“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 all, but sometimes I find myself saying just anything.” – Kathryn Nuernberger, “Float, Cleave”
“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 breathe.” – Virginia Woolf, Orlando
“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 camp. In the same way it should be possible to say, ‘This is a good book or a good picture, and it ought to be burned by the public hangman.’ Unless one can say that, at least in imagination, one is shirking the implications of the fact that an artist is also a citizen and a human being.” – George Orwell, “Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dalí”
“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 gifted. If Shakespeare returned to the earth to-morrow, and if it were found that his favourite recreation was raping little girls in railway carriages, we should not tell him to go ahead with it on the ground that he might write another King Lear. And, after all, the worst crimes are not always the punishable ones.” – George Orwell, “Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dalí”
“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”
“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 us the other gnaws us. If we survive the teeth, we succumb to the waves. A man who can destroy illusions is both beast and flood. Illusions are to the soul what atmosphere is to the earth. Roll up that tender air and the plant dies, the colour fades. The earth we walk on is a parched cinder. It is marl we tread and fiery cobbles scorch our feet. By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. ‘Tis waking that kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life—(and so on for six pages if you will, but the style is tedious and may as well be dropped.)” – Virginia Woolf, Orlando
“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 of the people when it disguises itself as something else. One can see an example of this in the folk-poetry that England still possesses, certain nursery rhymes and mnemonic rhymes, for instance, and the songs that soldiers make up, including the words that go to some of the bugle-calls. But in general ours is a civilization in which the very word ‘poetry’ evokes a hostile snigger or, at best, the sort of frozen disgust that most people feel when they hear the word ‘God’. If you are good at playing the concertina you could probably go into the nearest public bar and get yourself an appreciative audience within five minutes. But what would be the attitude of that same audience if you suggested reading them Shakespeare’s sonnets, for instance?” – George Orwell, “Rudyard Kipling”
“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
“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”
“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”
“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.” – Denis Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew (trans. Ian C. Johnston)
“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)
“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)
“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)
“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 is a flat calm more dangerous to important ventures than reefs or hurricanes. The indolence of sloth has a subtle and hidden charm for our souls which suspends our most ardent efforts, and crumbles our firmest resolutions.” – François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (trans. John Heard)
“Weakness, rather than vice, is the antithesis of virtue.” – François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (trans. John Heard)
“Every passion makes us commit faults, but love leads us into the most ridiculous blunders.” – François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (trans. John Heard)
“Vivacity in the old is not far removed from foolishness.” – François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (trans. John Heard)
“The worst form of ridicule to which old people, once charming, are susceptible, is to forget that they are no longer attractive.” – François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (trans. John Heard)
“Each age of life is new to us, and we find ourselves hampered by inexperience regardless of our years.” – François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (trans. John Heard)
“Praising the mighty for the virtues they do not possess is one method of insulting them with impunity.” – François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (trans. John Heard)
“Folly may be cured; an evil mind never.” – François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (trans. John Heard)