Sarah Seele’s Reviews > A Collection Of Essays: (Authorized Orwell Edition): A Mariner Books Classic > Status Update

oh, one knows exactly why the protagonist of Poe’s story cut out the black cat’s eye? one almost feels one would have done the same? SPEAK FOR YOURSELF, MR. ORWELL

“modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.” it’s so accurate

I disagree more with his take on Kipling than on Dickens, but still insightful—and smiled at the characterization of Kipling as “only half civilized”

“On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.”

Really enjoyed the evaluation of Charles Dickens, which I thought was both fair and astute (though I think I’m more in sympathy with Dickens’s views than Orwell is—probably because I’m not a socialist)