Money, money, all is money! Could you write even a penny novelette without money to put heart into you? Invention, energy, wit, style, charm – they’ve all got to be paid for in hard cash.
Poverty is poverty, whether the tool you work with is a pick-axe or fountain pen.
There was a direct, intimate connection between chastity and political orthodoxy.
Brother. But also they were outlaws, enemies, untouchables, doomed with absolute.
Each day they expend innumerable foot-pounds of energy – enough to plough thousands of acres, build miles of road, put up dozens of houses – in mere, useless walking.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever. The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: don’t let it happen. It depends on you.
He had still, he reflected, not learned the ultimate secret. He understood how; he did not understand why.
Gambling, beer and football filled the horizons of their minds.
He was the tormentor, he was the protector, he was the inquisitor, he was the friend.
And if the facts say otherwise, then the facts must be altered.
Perhaps “friend” was not exactly the right word. You did not have friends nowadays, you had comrades; but there were some comrades whose society was pleasanter than that of others.
Privacy, he said, was a very valuable thing. Everyone wanted a place where they could be alone occasionally.
It has been denied that any direct pressure was exerted by the Russian Government, but the point is not of great importance, for the Communist parties of all countries can be taken as carrying out Russian policy, and it is not denied that the Communist Party was the chief.
What’s the good of trying to revisit the scenes of your boyhood? They don’t exist. Comping up for air! But there isn’t any air. The dustbin that we’re in reaches up to the stratosphere.
For a few days after getting into the water the toad concentrates on building up his strength by eating small insects. Presently he has swollen to his normal size again, and then he goes through a phase of intense sexiness.
Fascism has nothing to do with capitalism. Fascism is just a kind of meaningless wickedness, an aberration, ‘mass sadism’, the sort of thing that would happen if you suddenly let loose an asylumful of homicidal maniacs.
Bad news coming, thought Winston. And sure enough, following on a gory description of the annihilation of a Eurasian army, with stupendous figures of killed and prisoners, came the announcement that, as from next week, the chocolate ration would be reduced from thirty grams to twenty.
A slave, Marcus Cato said, should be working when he is not sleeping. It does not matter whether his work is needed or not, he must work, because work in itself is good – for slaves, at least. This sentiment still survives, and it has piled up mountains of useless drudgery.
Suddenly his heart seemed to turn to ice and his bowels to water.
Life goes on much the same. In the face of terrifying dangers and golden political opportunities, people just keep-on keeping-on in a sort of twilight sleep in which they’re conscious of nothing but the daily-round of work, family life, darts at the pub, exercising the dog, bringing home the supper, beer, etc, etc.