I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in ... but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape.

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.

The pleasures of spring are available to everybody and cost nothing.

All through my boyhood I had a profound conviction that I was no good, that I was wasting my time, wrecking my talents, behaving with monstrous folly and wickedness and ingratitude-and all this, it seemed, was inescapable, because I lived among laws which were absolute, like the law of gravity, but which it was not possible for me to keep.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.

No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.