Sentimental you say? Anti-social? Oughtn’t to prefer trees to men? I say it depends what trees and what men.
George Orwell – “Coming Up for Air”
As a rule, I don’t care a damn about my age. Why should I? I’m fat, but I’m strong and healthy. I can do everything I want to do. A rose smells the same to me now as it did when I was twenty. Ah, but do I smell the same to the rose?
George Orwell – “Coming Up for Air”
When a woman’s bumped off, her husband is always the first suspect – which gives you a little sideglimpse of what people really thing about marriage.
George Orwell – “Coming Up for Air”
That was what the army did to you. It turned you into an imitation gentleman and gave you a fixed idea that there’s always be a bit of money coming from somewhere.
George Orwell – “Coming Up for Air”
Fishing is the opposite of war.
George Orwell – “Coming Up for Air”
People took politics seriously in those days. They used to begin storing up rotten eggs weeks before an election.
George Orwell – “Coming Up for Air”
How I could smell it! You know the smell churches have, a peculiar, dank, dusty, decaying sweetish sort of smell. There’s a touch of candle grease in it, and perhaps a whiff o incense and a suspicion of mice and on Sunday mornings it’s a bit overlaid by yellow soap and serge dresses, but predominantly it’s that sweet dusty musty smell that’s like the smell of death and life mixed up together. It’s powdered corpses, really.
George Orwell – “Coming Up for Air”
I felt in a kind of prophetic mood, the mood in which you foresee the end of the world and get a certain kick out of it.
George Orwell – “Coming Up for Air”
That’s the way we’re going nowadays. Everything slick and streamlined, everything made out of something else.
George Orwell – “Coming Up for Air”
We’re all bought, and what’s more, we’re bought with our own money. Every one of these poor towntrodden bastards, sweating his guts out to pay twice the proper house for a brick dolls’ house that’s called Belle Vue because there’s no view and the bell doesn’t ring – every one of these poor suckers would die on the filed of battle to save his country of Bolshevism.