The high-water mark, so to speak, of Socialist literature is W.H. Auden, a sort of gutless Kipling.

A fat man is never so happy as when he is describing himself as "robust.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

When I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.

Pessimism is reactionary because it makes the very idea of improving the world impossible.

But the thing that I saw in your face no power can disinherit: No bomb that ever burst shatters the crystal spirit.

Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English russophiles.