Windmill or no windmill, he said, life would go on as it had always gone on--that is, badly.

...every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures.

One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return.

The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living. A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors. The Party is not concerned with perpetuating its blood but with perpetuating itself. Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same.

You must be an intellectual. A normal person would never believe a thing like that.

During five literary generations every enlightened person had despised him, and at the end of that time nine-tenths of those enlightened persons are forgotten and Kipling is in some sense still there.

Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me: There lie they, and here lie we Under the spreading chestnut tree.