The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (334 page)
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Authors: Elizabeth Knowles
In the gloaming, Oh my darling!
When the lights are dim and low,
And the quiet shadows falling
Softly come and softly go.
"In the Gloaming" (1877 song)
1883–1955
Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia, y si no la salvo a ella no me salvo yo.I am I plus my surroundings, and if I do not preserve the latter I do not preserve myself.
Meditaciones del Quijote
(1914)
La civilización no es otra cosa que el ensayo de reducir la fuerza a ultima ratio.Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort.
La Rebelión de las Masas
(1930)
1933–67
I'd the upbringing a nun would envy…Until I was fifteen I was more familiar with Africa than my own body.
Entertaining Mr Sloane
(1964) act 1
It's all any reasonable child can expect if the dad is present at the conception.
Entertaining Mr Sloane
(1964) act 3
1903–50
Four legs good, two legs bad.
Animal Farm
(1945) ch. 3
All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
Animal Farm
(1945) ch. 10
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again, but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Animal Farm
(1945); closing words
Good prose is like a window-pane.
Collected Essays
(1968) vol. 1 "Why I Write"
I'm fat, but I'm thin inside. Has it ever struck you that there's a thin man inside every fat man, just as they say there's a statue inside every block of stone?
Coming up For Air
(1939) pt. 1, ch. 3.
Down and out in Paris and London.
title of book (1933)
Keep the aspidistra flying.
title of novel (1936)
Old maids biking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn mornings…these are not only fragments, but
characteristic
fragments, of the English scene.
The Lion and the Unicorn
(1941) pt. 1 "England Your England".
Probably the battle of Waterloo
was
won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.
The Lion and the Unicorn
(1941) pt. 1 "England Your England".
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
(1949) pt. 1, ch. 1
big brother is watching you
.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
(1949) pt. 1, ch. 1
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
(1949) pt. 1, ch. 7
The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention…It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant…the prizes were largely imaginary. Only small sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being non-existent persons.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
(1949) pt. 1, ch. 8
Doublethink
means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
(1949) pt. 2, ch. 9
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
(1949) pt. 3, ch. 3
Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
Shooting an Elephant
(1950) "Politics and the English Language"
Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie…A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.
in
Horizon
September 1941 "The Art of Donald McGill"
The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
in
Polemic
May 1946 "Second Thoughts on James Burnham"
At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.
last words in his notebook, 17 April 1949
Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.
attributed
1627–95
All letters, methinks, should be free and easy as one's discourse, not studied as an oration, nor made up of hard words like a charm.
letter to William Temple, September 1653