George Orwell
- Politics and the English Language
Prose today consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose-construction is habitually dodged.
anonymous
- Self-esteem
We're always encouraged to have "healthy self-esteem" and to keep working on "loving ourselves." But when does self-esteem become egotism? Isn't it selfish to spend time "loving ourselves" when we could actually be working on selflessness and humility?
Anonymous
- Kindness
We're told to practice kindness at all times, but no-one really does. Are you kind when you eat ham? Are you kind when you eat beef? Are you kind when you treat animals more horribly than we used to treat slaves? Think about it next time you settle down to a burger.
vegetarian
- vegetarianism
Just think about it. When you eat meat, you're putting a corpse in your mouth and in your stomach. The dead body of another living being. A creature just like you, with a family, with a mother, with emotions, capable of joy, love, anguish, despair.
Animal lover
- Animals
Anyone who thinks about it for ten minutes should be able to realize that it's wrong to eat meat, both morally and ethically. Animals have the same emotional capacity as human beings, if not more. Animals in the slaughterhouse are ripped from their mothers' sides and suffer horrible confusion and anguish.
Anonymous
- Thoughts for today
Whenever someone hurts you, or when you hear about a terrible crime on the news, or hear about someone hurting someone else, don't automatically jump to judgement. Hate the sin, not the sinner. We all have the ability to be malicious, to make terrible mistakes. Think to yourself: nothing human is alien to me.
Henry James
- The Portait of a Lady
Mrs. Ludlow was the eldest of the three sisters, and was usually thought the most sensible; the classification being in general that Lilian was the practical one, Edith the beauty and Isabel the "intellectual" superior. Mrs. Keyes, the second of the group, was the wife of an officer of the United States Engineers, and as our history is not further concerned with her it will suffice that she was indeed very pretty.
Truman
- The Parting of the Ways
Tim put the pan with the bacon over the small fire that was rapidly catching. The bacon remained still for a minute or so and then a tiny crackling sound started, and the bacon was frying. A very rancid odor came from the meat. Tim's sick face turned sicker from the fumes.
Thomas Mann
- Death in Venice
An offensive sultriness lay over the streets. The air was so heavy that the smells pouring out of homes, stores, and eating houses became mixed with oil, vapors, clouds of perfume, and still other odors-and these would not blow away, but hung in layers. Cigarette smoke remained suspended, disappearing very slowly.
Herman Melville
- Moby Dick
Nor did wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and still the more horrify the true histories of these deadly encounters. For not only do fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising terrible events,-as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi; but, in maritime life, far more than in that of terra firma, wild rumors abound, wherever there is any adequate reality for them to cling to.
Oscar Wilde
- The Importance of Being Earnest
Well, I don't like your clothes. You look perfectly ridiculous in them. Why on earth don't you go up and change? It is perfectly childish to be in deep mourning for a man who is actually staying for a whole week with you in your house as a guest. I call it grotesque.
Joseph Conrad
- Heart of Darkness
I went to work the next day, turning, so to speak, my back on that station. In that way only it seemed to me I could keep my hold on the redeeming facts of life. Still, one must look about sometimes; and then I saw this station, these men strolling aimlessly about in the sunshine of the yard. I asked myself sometimes what it all meant. They wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence.
Joseph Conrad
- Under Western Eyes
Putting aside Samuel Pepys, who has forced in this way the door of immortality, innumerable people, criminals, saints, philosophers, young girls, statesmen, and simple imbeciles, have kept self-revealing records from vanity no doubt, but also from other more inscrutable motives. There must be a wonderful soothing power in mere words since so many men have used them for self-communion.
Anonymous
- Quotes
I'm increasingly annoyed with the vapidity of the quotes on this forum. It seems as though all the other people practicing their typing are teenage boys into sci-fi adventure stories or fantasy. Either that, or people who believe in sappy, self-help platitudes. What about using this opportunity to face the truth - that life is brutal and full of suffering?
Oscar WIlde
- The Importance of Being Earnest
Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd. Nor do I in any way approve of the modern sympathy with invalids. I consider it morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others. Health is the primary duty of life.
Joseph Conrad
- The Secret Agent
He was a force. His thoughts caressed the images of ruin and destruction. He walked frail, insignificant, shabby, miserable - and terrible in the simplicity of his idea calling madness and despair to the regeneration of the world. Nobody looked at him. He passed on unsuspected and deadly, like a pest in the street full of men.
Vladimir Nabokov
- Lolita
Speaking of sharp turns: we almost ran over a meddlesome suburban dog (one of those that lie in wait for cars) as we swerved into Lawn Street. A little further, the Haze house, a white-framed horror, appeared, looking dingy and old, more gray than white-the kind of place you know will have a rubber tube affixed to the tub faucet instead of a shower.
Joseph Conrad
- Heart of Darkness
He died without uttering a sound, without moving a limb, without twitching a muscle. Only in the very last moment, as though in response to some sign we could not see, to some whisper we could not hear, he frowned heavily, and that frown gave to his black death-mask an inconceivably sombre, brooding, and menacing expression.
