A Quote by George Orwell

The most stirring battle-poem in English is about a brigade of cavalry which charged in the wrong direction.

George Orwell

Quote Topics

About Battle Brigade Cavalry Charged Direction English Most Poem Stirring Which Wrong Wrong Direction

Quote Author

George Orwell
British - Novelist
June 25, 1903 - January 21, 1950

My advice to the reader approaching a poem is to make the mind still and blank. Let the poem speak. This charged quiet mimics the blank space ringing the printed poem, the nothing out of which something takes shape.

Camille Paglia

Rational free spirits are the light brigade who go on ahead and reconnoiter the ground which the heavy brigade of the orthodox will eventually occupy.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

In the Army of the Shenandoah, you were the 'First Brigade!' In the Army of the Potomac you were the 'First Brigade!' In the Second Corps of this Army, you are the 'First Brigade!' You are the 'First Brigade' in the affections of your general, and I hope by your future deeds and bearing you will be handed down the posterity as the 'First Brigade' in this our Second War of Independence. Farewell!

Stonewall Jackson

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are cavalry charges in a battle - they are limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.

Alfred North Whitehead

One of the things I love about translation is it obliterates the self. When I'm trying to figure out what Tu Fu has to say, I have to kind of impersonate Tu Fu. I have to take on, if you will, his voice and his skin in English, and I have to try to get as deeply into the poem as possible. I'm not trying to make an equivalent poem in English, which can't be done because our language can't accommodate the kind of metaphors within metaphors the Chinese written language can, and often does, contain.

Sam Hamill

If somebody is going in the wrong direction, behavioral coaching just helps them get there faster. It doesn't turn the wrong direction into the right direction.

Marshall Goldsmith

The road for Arjuna is unexpected. Sri Krishna says you have to face that which you fear the most that which you're most attached to and eliminate it. In this case he has to fight a battle, and the battle is his attachments.

Frederick Lenz

Cavalry is useful before, during, and after the battle.

Napoleon Bonaparte

I grew up on the Bones Brigade as well. The very first skateboard video I saw was the Bones Brigade Video Show and I'd always valued the Bones Brigade and Powell Peralta as the ultimate in skateboarding.

Mike Vallely

[Asked about a book in which 100 Nazi professors charged him with scientific error.] Were I wrong, one professor would have been quite enough.

Albert Einstein

[Romans] never made any improvements on the cavalry. And amazingly, when you read the sources, they couldn't make it because stirrups were not known in Europe. For hundreds of years, the Romans couldn't make a cavalry which proved to be extremely effective.

Garry Kasparov

This noble word [women], spirit-stirring as it passes over English ears, is in America banished, and 'ladies' and 'females' substituted: the one to English taste mawkish and vulgar; the other indistinctive and gross.

Harriet Martineau

... The truth of the matter is, that most English people don't know how to make tea anymore either, and most people drink cheap instant coffee instead, which is a pity, and gives Americans the impression that the English are just generally clueless about hot stimulants.

Douglas Adams

Perhaps first and foremost is the challenge of taking what I find as a reader and making it into a poem that, primarily, has to be a plausible poem in English.

Marilyn Hacker

No one can stop you from doing exactly what you want to do. If you can accept that the cavalry won't come, and if you can be the cavalry, it gives you a chance to be happy.