He [George Orwell] would not blow his nose without moralising on conditions in the handkerchief industry.

There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.

If one is too lazy to think, too vain to do a thing badly, too cowardly to admit it, one will never attain wisdom.

There is no hate without fear. Hate is crystallized fear, fear's dividend, fear objectivized. We hate what we fear and so where hate is, fear is lurking. Thus we hate what threatens our person, our liberty, our privacy, our income, our popularity, our vanity and our dreams and plans for ourselves. If we can isolate this element in what we hate we may be able to cease from hating... Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate; a child who fears noises becomes the man who hates them.

Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learned to walk.

Poets arguing about modern poetry: jackals snarling over a dried-up well.

Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of charm.