George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair), 1903 - 1950
(ca. 1940)
Born: 25 June 1903, Motihari, Bihar, Bengal Presidency, British India
Died: 21 January 1950, Camden, London, England, UK
Born Eric Arthur Blair, his father was in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service. A year later Eric left for England with his sisters and mother and other than one visit did not see his father again until 1912. He did well at his first school, earning himself a scholarship to St Cyprian's School at Eastbourne, Sussex. On leaving there he had scholarships to both Wellington College and Eton College, he went to Wellington for a term before a place as King's Scholar opened up for him at Eton. There he lost interest in school and had only fair grades so no university scholarships were forthcoming. He joined the Indian Imperial Police and spent five years in Burma and India before contracting Dengue fever in 1927, returning to England to convalesce. He chose to resign that position and take up writing, moving first to London for the publishing contacts and then to Paris for the low cost of living. After two years he wrote Down and Out in Paris and London, to avoid embarrassing his family he used the name George Orwell. When the Spanish Civil War broke out he volunteered on the Republican side, he was shot in the neck by a sniper, the bullet just missed an artery and he returned to England and journalism. He wrote a staggering number of excellent book reviews and quite a bit of commentary in leftist publications. When World War II broke out he was ruled unfit for any military service but spent two years at the BBC writing propaganda and started writing Animal Farm. As the Soviet Union was an ally he was unable to get the book published until the war ended. In 1949 he published 1984, but by the time he finished it he was suffering greatly from tuberculosis. For the last four years of his life he sought refuge from the press of London's literary swirl on the island of Jura in the Inner Hebrides, writing most of 1984 there. His health took him to a sanatorium in the Cotswolds and in September of 1949 he was taken to University College Hospital at London. He married his second wife in his hospital room in October, an artery in his lungs burst in January.
Biography from Wikipedia and George-Orwell.org
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George Orwell quotes:
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- A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion. permalink
George Orwell - A family with the wrong members in control; that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase. permalink
George Orwell - A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. permalink
George Orwell - Politics and the English Language (1946) - A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics". All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. permalink
George Orwell - A normal human being does not want the Kingdom of Heaven: he wants life on earth to continue. This is not solely because he is "weak," "sinful" and anxious for a "good time." Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise. permalink
George Orwell - "Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool" Polemic (March 1947) - A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? permalink
George Orwell - Politics and the English Language (1946) - A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him. permalink
George Orwell - "Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool" Polemic (March 1947) - Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket. permalink
George Orwell - Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) - All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. permalink
George Orwell - Animal Farm 1945 - All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. permalink
George Orwell - All propaganda is lies — even when it is telling the truth. permalink
George Orwell - All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers. permalink
George Orwell - 1984 (1949) - All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. permalink
George Orwell - An 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. permalink
George Orwell - "Benefit Of Clergy: Some Notes On Salvador Dal?," Dickens, Dali & Others: Studies in Popular Culture (1944) - Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing. permalink
George Orwell
Quotes found : 164 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 11) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next
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