George Orwell Quotes

O joy of suffering! To struggle against great odds! to meet enemies undaunted! To be entirely alone with them! to find how much one can stand! To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, death, face to face! To mount the scaffold! to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance! To be indeed a God!

Braving obstacles and hardships is nobler than retreat to tranquility. The butterfly that hovers around the lamp until it dies is more admirable than the mole that lives in a dark tunnel.

But here, in the murk of conflagration, where scarcely a friend is left to know we, the survivors, do not flinch from anything, not from a single blow. Surely the reckoning will be made after the passing of this cloud. We are the people without tears, straighter than you ... more proud.

What must be done must be done, whatever the price, the cost, the pain. One day we all must walk through fire.

I have often had occasion to remark the fortitude with which women sustain the most overwhelming reverses of fortunes.

We all wish to be brave and strong in the face of disaster. We all wish to be looked up to for our endurance and efforts to help others.

It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.

To be honest...here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude...

I don't need your organization, I've moved your mountains and I've marked you cards, but Eden is burning. You better get ready for elimination or else your hearts must have the courage of the changing of the guard.

I am less affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in the front line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the snow-plow for their winter quarters; who have not merely the three-o'-clock-in-the-morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron steed are frozen.

I was there. I saw your sons and your husbands, your brothers and your sweethearts. I saw how they worked, played, fought, and lived. I saw some of them die. I saw more courage, more good humor in the face of discomfort, more love in an era of hate and more devotion to duty than could exist under tyranny.

Great suffering brings with it the power of great endurance. When sorrow is deepest all the forces of patience and courage are banded together to do their duty. So while we are cowards before petty troubles, great sorrows make us brave by rousing our truer manhood.

There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater. But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life. That is the sort of bravery I must have now.

A truley heroic way of life lies in squarely confronting and courageously overcoming the pounding vicissitudes that life always throws in our paths

When all the blandishments of life are gone, The coward sneaks to death, the brave live on.

To stand on the firing parapet and expose yourself to danger; to stand and fight a thousand miles from home when you're all alone and outnumbered and probably beaten; to spit on your hands and lower the pike; to stand fast over the body of Leonidas the King; to be rear guard at Kunu-Ri; to stand and be still to the Birkenhead Drill; these are not rational acts. They are often merely necessary.

Sometimes, she thought, courage was simply a matter of putting one foot in front of another and not stopping.

Whatever comes out of despair cannot bear the title of valor, which should be lifted up to such a height that holding all things under itself, it should be able to maintain its greatness, even in the midst of miseries.

Dispose thyself to patience rather than to comfort, and to the bearing of the cross rather than to gladness.

Courage! Suffering, when it climbs highest, lasts not long.

They smiled in their pains and laughed to scorn those who inflicted torments on them, resigned up their souls with great alacrity, expecting to receive them again.

It was the transcendent fortitude and steadfastness of these men who in adversity and in suffering through the darkest hour of our history held faithful to an ideal. Here men endured that a nation might live.

Fortitude is a great help in distress.

When you're up against a trouble, meet it squarely, face to face. Lift your chin and set your shoulders, plant your feet and take a brace. When it's vain to try to dodge it, do the best that you can do. You may fail, but you may conquer. See it through!