George Orwell Quotes

The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.

Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company.

There are a lot of people who are doing wonderful things, quietly, with no motive of greed, or hostility toward other people, or delusions of superiority.

If you are a humble person, politics is not for you. Politics is brutal, cruel and vicious and is incompatible with Christianity.

He is not a … politician who would sacrifice his soul for office; he is not a member of Congress who would promise anything to win a second term. He represents all that is best in American manhood involving integrity of character, a sane mind, and the loftiest of motives.

There are people who do everything for a calculative political motive. My only motive is a human motive.

If a man has a right to be proud of anything, it is of a good action done as it ought to be, without any base interest lurking at the bottom of it.

There is but on virtue--the eternal sacrifice of self.

Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them - that it was a vain endeavor?

If we make sacrifices in doing good or in doing ill, it does not alter the ultimate value of our actions; even if we stake our life in the cause, as martyrs do for the sake of our church : it is a sacrifice to our longing for power, or for the purpose of conserving our sense of power.

A good man will never harm or oppress another. A good man will share his last morsel of food with others in need, and die of hunger when he no longer has any food -- instead of cheat or steal from others to survive. Selflessness. Humility. Truthfulness. These are the three marks of an honorable man.

Know you not that a good man does nothing for appearance sake, but for the sake of having done right?

The heroic soul does not sell its justice and its nobleness.

Generosity knows how to count, but refrains.

You are your best self when you give yourself away.

A human being has many divine qualities. But there has never been another unparalleled divine quality like man's self-sacrifice, nor can there ever be.

The essence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of self pass in, and the beauty of a great action is gone, like the bloom from a soiled flower.

The event of falling in love... in one high bound it has overleaped the massive wall of our selfhood; it has made appetite itself altruistic, tossed personal happiness aside as a triviality and planted the interests of another in the centre of our being.

Every noble impulse, every unselfish expression of love, every surrender of self to something higher than self, every loyalty to an ideal, every fine courage of the soul – by doing good for good’s sake – that is spirituality. –

Sacrifice is a demonstration of pure love.

Altruism is for those who cannot endure their desires.

Love means giving something you don't have to someone who doesn't want it.

Service is selflessness--the opposite of the lifestyle that we see so much of in America today. The things that entertain us don't often lift us up, or show us as the people we can rise up to become. The people who appear in this book--and others who did things I can't talk about--are my role models. They quietly live out the idea expressed in the Bible (John 15:13): "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

To suffer with the other and for others; to suffer for the sake of truth and justice; to suffer out of love and in order to become a person who truly loves - these are fundamental elements of humanity, and to abandon them would destroy man himself.