“Is a PLONGEUR'S work really necessary to civilization? We have a feeling that it must be 'honest' work, because it is hard and disagreeable, and we have made a sort of fetish of manual work. We see...”

“At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.”

“We sleep soundly in our beds, because rough men stand ready in the night to do violence on those who would harm us"Orwell cited Kipling's phrase "making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sl...”

“On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.”

“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

“We are looking for a tongue that speaks with reverence for life, searching for an ecology of mind. Without it, we have no home, no place of our own within the creation. It is not only the vocabular...”

“But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them.”

“Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw? Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder goe wh...”

“There was a direct intimate connection between chastity and political orthodoxy. For how could the fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the r...”

“It is possible for a Christian to be perfectly orthodox and yet to be defeated, and to be living a defeated and a useless life.”

“There is only one way to salvation, and that is to make yourself responsible for all men's sins. As soon as you make yourself responsible in all sincerity for everything and for everyone, you will ...”