Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it.

Ignorance and prejudice are the ballast of our ship of state - however, ships without ballast are not seaworthy and cannot sail in the tempests, nor reach a safe harbor.

It was like swimming against a current that swept you backwards however hard you struggled, and then suddenly deciding to turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. Nothing had changed except your own attitude: the predestined thing happened in any case.

I think I exist,' he said wearily. 'I am conscious of my own identity. I was born, and I shall die. I have arms and legs. I occupy a particular point in space. No other solid object can occupy the same point simultaneously.

He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.

When I joined the militia I had promised myself to kill one Fascist - after all, if each of us killed one they would soon be extinct.

There is no test of literary merit except survival, which is itself an index to majority opinion.