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Fariha
is on page 355 of 1369
It is not merely a coincidence that Dickens never writes about agriculture and writes endlessly about food. He was a cockney, and London is the centre of the earth in rather the same sense that the belly is the centre of the body. It is a city of consumers, of people who are deeply civilised but not primarily useful. A thing that strikes one when one looks below the surface of Dickens's books is that,
— Jan 10, 2026 08:02AM
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Fariha’s Previous Updates
Fariha
is on page 530 of 1369
There are certainly innumerable reasons why war should be opposed, but the chief reason is the diabolical nature of modern warfare, with its diabolical repercussions upon human personality and values. I am not referring only to the act of warfare itself, but the whole complex of events which is war. The corruption and hollowness revealed in the prosecution of this war are too contemptible for words.
— Feb 20, 2026 09:53AM
Fariha
is on page 528 of 1369
As a general rule, Indians are reliably anti-Fascist [Pro-Britain] in proportion as they are westernised. That is why at the beginning of this review I described the English language as a weapon of war. Mr Anand does not like us very much, and some of his colleagues hate us very bitterly; but so long as they voice their hatred in English they are in a species of alliance with us, and an ultimate decent settlement...
— Feb 20, 2026 09:23AM
Fariha
is on page 500 of 1369
Here are half a dozen phrases coined by Kipling which one sees quoted in leaderettes in the gutter press or overhears in saloon bars from people who have barely heard his name. It will be seen that they all have a certain characteristic in common:
East is East, and West is West.
The white man’s burden.
What do they know of England who only England know ?
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
— Feb 14, 2026 07:41AM
East is East, and West is West.
The white man’s burden.
What do they know of England who only England know ?
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Fariha
is on page 500 of 1369
The ruling power is always faced with the question, “In such & such circumstances,what would you 'do' ? whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions.Where it is a permanent and pensioned opposition, as in England, the quality of its thought deteriorates accordingly. Moreover, anyone who starts out with a pessimistic, reactionary view of life tends to be justified by events..
— Feb 14, 2026 07:19AM
Fariha
is on page 496 of 1369
After the greatest victory she had ever known, Britain was a lesser world power than before, and Kipling was quite acute enough to see this. The virtue had gone out of the classes he idealised, the young were hedonistic or disaffected, the desire to paint the map red had evaporated. He could not understand what was happening, because he had never had any grasp of the economic forces underlying imperial expansion.
— Feb 12, 2026 06:54AM
Fariha
is on page 495 of 1369
...It is not a text that makes much impression on the post Hitler mind. No one, in our time, believes in any sanction greater than military power; no one believes that it is possible to overcome force except by greater force. There is no “law”, there is only power. I am not saying that that is a true belief, merely that it is the belief which all modern men do actually hold.
— Feb 12, 2026 06:50AM
Fariha
is on page 487 of 1369
The notion that you can somehow defeat violence by submitting to it is simply a flight from fact. As I have said, it is only possible to people who have money and guns between themselves and reality. But why should they want to make this flight, in any case ? Because, rightly hating violence, they do not wish to recognise that it is integral to modern society and that their own fine feelings and noble attitudes...
— Feb 10, 2026 07:26AM
Fariha
is on page 485 of 1369
...but in so far as he is a member of the middle class, doing work which he has chosen for himself, he is one of a few million favoured human beings who live ultimately on the degradation of the rest. He wants to get on with his work, wants to be out of reach of Nazi tyranny and regimentation, but he will not act against the Nazis in any other way than by running away from them.
— Feb 10, 2026 07:11AM
Fariha
is on page 480 of 1369
....in a totalitarian society, if they had any freedom of expression at all, they would probably concentrate on laziness or cowardice, but at any rate on the unheroic in one form or another. It will not do to condemn them on the ground that they are vulgar and ugly. That is exactly what they are meant to be. Their whole meaning and virtue is in their unredeemed lowness, not only in the sense of obscenity,
— Feb 07, 2026 07:46AM
Fariha
is on page 466 of 1369
There are several vital differences between totalitarianism and all the orthodoxies of the past, either in Europe or in the East. The most important is that the orthodoxies of the past did not change, or at least did not change rapidly. In medieval Europe the Church dictated what you should believe, but at least it allowed you to retain the same beliefs from birth to death.
— Feb 01, 2026 07:41AM
Dickens sees human beings with the most intense vividness, but he sees them always in private life, as "characters", not as functional members of society ; that is to say, he sees them statically. Consequently his greatest success is The Pickwick Papers, which is not a story at all, merely a series of sketches ; there is little attempt at development-the characters simply go on and on, behaving like idiots, in a kind of eternity.