The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

‘Shooting an Elephant’ (1950) ‘Politics and the English Language’
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and
one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a
cuttlefish squirting out ink.
‘Shooting an Elephant’ (1950) ‘Politics and the English Language’
Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy,
boastfulness, and disregard of all the rules.
‘Shooting an Elephant’ (1950)
Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives
to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an
appearance of solidity to pure wind.
‘Shooting an Elephant’ (1950) ‘Politics and the English Language’
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.
‘Shooting an Elephant’ (1950) ‘Reflections on Gandhi’
Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.
Attributed
3.29 Dorothy Osborne 1627-95
The heat of the day is spent in reading or working, and about six or seven o’clock, I walk out
into a common that lies hard by the house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep and
cows and sit in the shade singing of ballads...I talk to them, and find they want nothing to make
them the happiest people in the world, but the knowledge that they are so.
‘The Letters of Dorothy Osborne to William Temple’ (ed. G. C. Moore Smith, 1928) June 1653
All letters, methinks, should be as free and easy as one’s discourse, not studied as an oration,
nor made up of hard words like a charm.
Letter to Sir William Temple, October 1653
I had rather agree to what you say than tell you that Dr Taylor (whose devote you must know I
am) says there is a great advantage to be gained in resigning up one’s will to the command of
another, because the same action which in itself is wholly indifferent if done upon our own
choice, becomes an act of duty and religion if done in obedience to the command of any person
whom nature, the laws, or our selves have given a power over us.
‘The Letters of Dorothy Osborne to William Temple’ (ed. G. C. Moore Smith, 1928) March 1654
3.30 John Osborne 1929—
Don’t clap too hard—it’s a very old building.
‘The Entertainer’ (1957) no. 7
Thank God we’re normal, normal, normal,
Thank God we’re normal,
Yes, this is our finest shower!
‘The Entertainer’ (1957) no. 7