George Orwell Quotes - Page 29

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...every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures.

George Orwell

Humans, Doomed, Dies

George Orwell (2001). “The Complete Novels of George Orwell: Animal Farm, Burmese Days, A Clergyman's Daughter, Coming Up for Air, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Nineteen Eighty-Four”, p.1359, Penguin UK

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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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The weariness of the cell is the vigour of the organism.

George Orwell

Cells, Organisms, Weariness

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

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For after all, what is there behind, except money? Money for the right kind of education, money for influential friends, money for leisure and peace of mind, money for trips to Italy. Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O lord, give me money, only money.

George Orwell

Book, Writing, Giving

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

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We were once told that the aeroplane had "abolished frontiers"; actually it is only since the aeroplane became a serious weapon that frontiers have become definitely impassable.

George Orwell

Air Power, Weapons, Serious

George Orwell (1968). “The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: In front of your nose, 1945-1950”

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[T]he outcry against killing women, if you accept killing at all, is sheer sentimentality.:; Why is it worse to kill a woman than a man?

George Orwell

Men, Killing, Accepting

George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: I have tried to tell the truth, 1943-1944”

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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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I am afraid of death. You are young, so presumably you're more afraid of it than I am. Obviously we shall put if off as long as we can. But it makes very little difference. So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.

George Orwell

Life, Differences, Long

George Orwell (1983). “1984”, p.299, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.

George Orwell

Leadership, Courage, Empowering Others

George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.114, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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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All through my boyhood I had a profound conviction that I was no good, that I was wasting my time, wrecking my talents, behaving with monstrous folly and wickedness and ingratitude-and all this, it seemed, was inescapable, because I lived among laws which were absolute, like the law of gravity, but which it was not possible for me to keep.

George Orwell

Law, Profound, Wickedness

George Orwell, Peter Hobley Davison, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “It is what I think: 1947-1948”

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A fat man is never so happy as when he is describing himself as "robust.

George Orwell

Men, Obesity, Robust

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

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No one, at any rate no English writer, has written better about childhood than Dickens. In spite of all the knowledge that has accumulated since, in spite of the fact that children are now comparatively sanely treated, no novelist has shown the same power of entering into the child's point of view.

George Orwell

Children, Views, Childhood

George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.14, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic. Women face childbed and the scrubbing brush, revolutionaries keep their mouths shut in the torture chamber, battleships go down with their guns still firing when their decks are awash.

George Orwell

Gun, Heroism, Mouths

George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.167, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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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Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.

George Orwell

Struggle, Book, Writing

George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.316, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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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Comrades," he said, "here is a point that must be settled. The wild creatures, such as rats and rabbits–are they our friends or our enemies? Let us put it to the vote. I propose this question to the meeting: Are rats comrades?" The vote was taken at once, and it was agreed by an overwhelming majority that rats were comrades. There were only four dissentients, the three dogs and the cat, who was afterwards discovered to have voted on both sides.

George Orwell

Dog, Taken, Cat

George Orwell (2016). “Animal Farm”, p.3, Hamilton Books

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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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Never, for any reason on earth, could you wish for an increase in pain. Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop.

George Orwell

Pain, Wish, Earth

George Orwell (1983). “1984”, p.515, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia's life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.

George Orwell

Heart, Rooms, Crystals

George Orwell (2003). “1984”, Plume Books

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Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional [or scholarly] writers.

George Orwell

Fighting, Thinking, Political

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

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Only old Benjamin professed to remember every detail of his long life and to know that things never had been, nor ever could be much better or much worse--hunger, hardship, and disappointment being, so he said, the unalterable law of life.

George Orwell

Disappointment, Law, Long

George Orwell (2016). “Animal Farm”, p.47, Hamilton Books

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I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.

George Orwell

Done, Fool

"Shooting an Elephant" (1936)

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And yet, just for a moment, what almost frightening power had sounded in that cry from only a few hundred throats! Why was it that they could never shout like that about anything that mattered?

George Orwell

Cry, Moments, Hundred

George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.169, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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

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