An earthquake is such fun when it is over.

It is not that anyone imagines the law to be just. Everyone knows that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. But no one accepts the implications of this, everyone takes it for granted that the law, such as it is, will be respected, and feels a sense of outrage when it is not.

The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated.

The obvious, the silly and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that!

And the whole huge town of a million people was locked in a sort of violent inertia, a nightmare of noise without movement.

The past was dead, the future was unimaginable. What certainty had he that a single human creature now living was on his side?

When I saw her in the light she was quite an old woman, fifty years old at least. But I went ahead and did it just the same.