Ahmad-+general+quote+folder


 * Fatalism**

"There were times when the fact of impending death seemed as palpable as the bed they lay on" 'If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping of a human face --for ever.'// ‘You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.’ // Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference. // ‘If predestination really exists, why have we been given free-will and reason? Why do we have to give an account of our deeds?’ // “why did fate toss me into the peaceful midst of these honest smugglers?” “...fate always seems to have brought me in for the dénounment of other people’s drama’s” “how many times have I been in the axe in the hands of fate?” “Why didn’t I choose to follow the path that fate had opened to me?”


 * Perception of Women**

//It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party…’//

Oh women, women! Who really does understand them? // I must confess I don’t really like strong-willed women. That’s not their role in life!’ // “It is difficult to convince women of something; one must lead them to believe that they have convinced themselves”


 * Love**

“ If you like I’m still in love with her. I’m greatful to her for a few moments of relative bliss. I’d give my life for her. But she bores me.”

There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother.

//And what he wanted, more even than to be loved, was to break down that wall of virtue, even if it were only once in his whole life. The sexual act, successfully performed, was rebellion. Desire was thoughtcrime.//

**Pechorin**
// ‘Of two friends, one is always the slave of the other, though often neither will admit it. I can never be a slave, and to command in these circumstances is too exacting. For you have to pretend at the same time.’ // // ‘What if it does? If I die, I die. It will be small loss to the world, and I’ve had about enough of it myself.’ // // ‘What is happiness but gratified pride? If I thought myself better and more powerful than everyone else in the world, I should be happy.’ //
 * Cynicism**

// ‘My whole life has been nothing but a series of dismal, unsuccessful attempts to go against heart or reason’ // ‘// The turmoil of life has left me with a few ideas, but no feelings’ // "For a long time now I've lived by intellect, not feeling." // ‘Passions are merely ideas in their initial stage. They are the property of youth, and anyone who expects to feel their thrill throughout his life is a fool.’ // "I make fun of everything, feelings especially, and this is beginning to alarm her."
 * Inability for emotional experience**

**Byronic Hero** "I'll hazard my life, even my honor, twenty times, but I will not sell my freedom." "This is how the hero of our time must be. He will be characterized either by decisive inaction, or else by futile activity." “There are two men within me – one lives in the full sense of the word, the other reflects and judges him. In an hour’s time the first may be leaving you and the world for ever, and the second? …the second?”


 * Winston

Not a typical hero** "A varicose ulcer above his right ankle"

"Do it to Julia!"

Winstons's hatred was not turned against Goldstein at all, but, on the contrary, against Big Brother, the Party and the Thought Police.
 * Desire to rebel**

//‘There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the world, you were not mad.’//


 * Oppression**

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping of a human face --for ever. // ‘Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ // // ‘…the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested.’ // "Big Brother is watching you" The two aims of the party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought. "Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right"


 * Laws of society**

‘The laws that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much.’ ‘He started off by saying that my niece had //consented,// can you imagine’ (women are not supposed to consent for sex) ‘The fate of the wretched man-less woman’ 'They had no instrument to calibrate how much punishment he could take.' (shows true level of division of classes)


 * Estha and Rahel**

‘As though they were a rare bread of Siamese twins, physically separate, but with joint identities’

‘But a viable die-able age’ //‘In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices.’//
 * Narrative voice**


 * Decay**

//‘…crazy garden walls sagging in all directions? And the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and the willowherb straggled over the heaps of rubble.’

'...it had grown knotted and wild, like a circus whose animals had forgotten their tricks.'//