ifa > ifa's Quotes

“Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like Negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty?”
― George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

“It is worth saying something about the social position of beggars, for when one has consorted with them, and found that they are ordinary human beings, one cannot help being struck by the curious attitude that society takes towards them. People seem to feel that there is some essential difference between beggars and ordinary 'working' men. They are a race apart--outcasts, like criminals and prostitutes. Working men 'work', beggars do not 'work'; they are parasites, worthless in their very nature. It is taken for granted that a beggar does not 'earn' his living, as a bricklayer or a literary critic 'earns' his. He is a mere social excrescence, tolerated because we live in a humane age, but essentially despicable.

Yet if one looks closely one sees that there is no ESSENTIAL difference between a beggar's livelihood and that of numberless respectable people. Beggars do not work, it is said; but, then, what is WORK? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, chronic bronchitis, etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course--but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. And as a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others. He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout--in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering. I do not think there is anything about a beggar that sets him in a different class from other people, or gives most modern men the right to despise him.

Then the question arises, Why are beggars despised?--for they are despised, universally. I believe it is for the simple reason that they fail to earn a decent living. In practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable. In all the modem talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except 'Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it'? Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised. If one could earn even ten pounds a week at begging, it would become a respectable profession immediately. A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a businessman, getting his living, like other businessmen, in the way that comes to hand. He has not, more than most modem people, sold his honour; he has merely made the mistake of choosing a trade at which it is impossible to grow rich.”
― George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

“In practice nobody cares if work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable. In all the modern talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except " Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it"? Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised.”
― George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

“You can see wealth in people no matter what they're wearing. It's in the cut of their chins, a certain gloss to the skin, a drag and pause to their responsiveness. When poor people hear a loud noise, they whip their heads around. Wealthy people finish their sentences, then just glance back.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen

“I couldn't be bothered to deal with fixing things. I preferred to wallow in the problem, dream of better days.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen

“Furthermore, as is typical for any isolated, intelligent young person, I thought I was the only one with any consciousness, any awareness of how odd it was to be alive, to be a creature on this strange planet Earth.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen

“The idea that my brains could be untangled, straightened out, and thus refashioned into a state of peace and sanity was a comforting fantasy.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen

“I looked so boring, lifeless, immune and unaffected, but in truth I was always furious, seething, my thoughts racing, my mind like a killer’s. It was easy to hide behind the dull face I wore, moping around. I really thought I had everybody fooled. And I didn’t really read books about flowers or home economics. I liked books about awful things—murder, illness, death.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen

“It also concerned me that my demise would have no great impact, that I could blow my head off and people would say, “That’s all right. Let’s get something to eat.” That”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen

“People are wrong when they think that an unemployed man only worries about losing his wages; on the contrary, an illiterate man, with the work habit in his bones, needs work even more than he needs money. An educated man can put up with enforced idleness, which is one of the worst evils of poverty. But a man like Paddy, with no means of filling up time, is as miserable out of work as a dog on the chain. That is why it is such nonsense to pretend that those who have 'come down in the world' are to be pitied above all others.
The man who really merits pity is the man who has been down from the start,
and faces poverty with a blank, resourceless mind.”
― George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

“We know that poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness. But don't expect us to do anything about it. We are sorry for you lower classes, just as we are sorry for a, cat with the mange, but we will fight like devils against any improvement of your condition. We feel that you are much safer as you are. The present state of affairs suits us, and we are not going to take the risk of setting you free, even by an extra hour a day. So, dear brothers, since evidently you must sweat to pay for our trips to Italy, sweat and be damned to you.”
― George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

“The desire for reassurance. And, equally, to be reassured. (The itch to ask whether I’m still loved; and the itch to say, I love you, half-fearing that the other has forgotten, since the last time I said it.)”
― Susan Sontag

“Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.”
― Susan Sontag

“People talk about the ability to endure. To endure anything and everything, to keep going, to be strong. But you can do that only if you're not alone. That's always the infrastructure life's built on. A closeness with others. Alone it all becomes a struggle of mere endurance.”
― Iain Reid, I'm Thinking of Ending Things

“But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“But this too is true: stories can save us.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do. ”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“How could he think his way out of the problem when the problem was the way he thought...”
― Edward St. Aubyn, Bad News

“True enough,” said Mrs. Copperfield, bringing her fist down on the table and looking very mean. “I have gone to pieces, which is a thing I’ve wanted to do for years. I know I am as guilty as I can be, but I have my happiness, which I guard like a wolf, and I have authority now and a certain amount of daring, which, if you remember correctly, I never had before.”
― Jane Bowles, Two Serious Ladies

“..it is against my entire code, but then, I have never even begun to use my code, although I judge everything by it.”
― Jane Bowles, Two Serious Ladies

“The world and all the people in it had suddenly slipped beyond her comprehension and she felt in great danger of losing the whole world once and for all--a feeling that is difficult to explain.”
― Jane Bowles, Two Serious Ladies

“I think I can remember
being dead. Many times, in winter,
I approached Zeus. Tell me, I would ask him,
how can I endure the earth?”
― Louise Glück, Averno

“How privileged you are, to be
passionately
clinging to what you love;
the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you.”
― Louise Glück, October

“It is terrible to be alone.
I don't mean to live alone---
to be alone, where no one hears you.”
― Louise Glück, Averno

“No one's despair is like my despair--”
― Louise Glück, The Wild Iris

“What was my crime in another life,
as in this life my crime
is sorrow”
― Louise Glück, The Wild Iris

“Forgive me, lady;
longing has taken my grace. I am
not what you wanted.”
― Louise Glück, The Wild Iris

“If your soul died, whose life are you living, and when did you become that person?”
― Louise Glück, Averno

“And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath