And the bigger the fall, the bigger the joke. It would be better fun to throw a custard pie at a bishop than at a curate.

Every war, when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

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?

A human being is primarily a bag for putting food into.

By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself.

He thought with a kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear, the treachery of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed.

Perhaps it is only when people are somewhere near the starvation level that they have anything to sing about.