In his last years, Orwell had an odd friendly acquaintance with Evelyn Waugh, based on wary mutual admiration. Orwell was planning an essay in which he proposed to call Waugh as good a writer as it was possible to be while holding impossible opinions. In return, Waugh deplored Orwell's irreligion and "unreasoned animosity of a class war". But he also recognised something more important than any animosity or "ism", his "unusually high moral sense and respect for justice and truth". That perhaps describes better than any longer analysis the politics of George Orwell, and why we still love and revere him.Must ... pull ... harder ... against ... the memory ... hole ...
"The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." --Jesus
"Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious" --George Orwell
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." --F. Scott Fitzgerald
Thursday, December 04, 2003
Orwellian Prudence?
Check out this snippet on Orwell in relation to this blog's recent fixation: