:) > :)'s Quotes

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“In the face of pain there are no heroes.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull. ”
― George Orwell, 1984

“I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don't want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“If there is hope, it lies in the proles.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“All great and precious things are lonely.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“I wonder how many people I have looked at all my life and never really seen.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.”
― John Steinbeck , East of Eden

“Sometimes when she was alone, and she knew she was alone, she permitted her mind to play in a garden, and she smiled.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Nobody has the right to remove any single experience from another. Life and death are promised. We have a right to pain.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“I know it might be better for you to come out from under your might-have-beens, into the winds of the world.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“She learned revolution is, in fact, always unimaginable. It shatters the world you know. The future is unwritten, brimming with potential. The colonizers have no idea what is coming, and that makes them panic. It terrifies them.

Good. It should.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Grief suffocated. Grief paralysed. Grief was a cruel, heavy boot pressed so hard against his chest that he could not breathe.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“I suppose we decided to be girls because being boys seems to require giving up half your brain cells.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“We're here to make magic with words”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Words and phrases you think are carved into your bones can disappear in no time.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“They could no longer look at the world and not see stories, histories, layered everywhere like centuries’ worth of sediment.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Power did not lie in the tip of a pen. Power did not work against its own interests. Power could only be brought to heel by acts of defiance it could not ignore. With brute, unflinching force. With violence.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Language was just difference. A thousand different ways of seeing, of moving through the world.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“…he despised them, that he knew they could be up to no good, and that still he wanted to be respected by them enough to be included in their ranks.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel