A Quote by George Orwell

Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.

George Orwell

Quote Topics

Autobiography Disgraceful Only Reveals Something Trusted

Quote Author

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

Traditional autobiography has generally had a poor press. The novelist Daphne du Maurier condemned all examples of this literary form as self-indulgent. Others have quipped that autobiography reveals nothing bad about its writer except his memory.

Craig Venter

An autobiography usually reveals nothing bad about its writer except his memory.

Franklin P. Jones

An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.

V. S. Naipaul

I'd trusted my fan base, I'd trusted the my gut, and I'd trusted the music. ...the real experts are out there in front of you every night. They're the ones buying the tickets and coming to the shows. They're the professionals in this business, and they're the only ones who can tell you which songs have the ability to move them.

Eric Church

God's revelation is in the gospel not only reveals who He is, but it also reveals who we are.

David Platt

He chose a certain path in life, it proved to be a misguided one, but there, he chose it, he can say that at least. As for myself, I cannot even claim that. You see, I trusted. I trusted in his lorship's wisdom. All those years I served him, I trusted I was doing something worthwhile. I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that?

Kazuo Ishiguro

Yes, one uses what one knows, but autobiography means something else. I should never be able to write a real autobiography; I always end by falsifying and fictionalizing—I’m a liar, in fact. That means I’m a novelist, after all. I write about what I know.

Alberto Moravia

If you say: I believed in God, I trusted God and He didn't come through - You only trusted God to meet your agenda.

Timothy Keller

I thought it would be more interesting to make a musical autobiography than an actual autobiography.

Ian Brown

Imagine the National Guard being called against a group of peaceful people. How far can we get; how disgraceful can it become? It's the most disgraceful, the most wicked thing I've seen in all my years of organizing farm labor.

Cesar Chavez

Meditation speaks. It speaks in silence. It reveals. It reveals to the aspirant that matter and spirit are one, quantity and quality are one, the immanent and the transcendent are one. It reveals that life can never be the mere existence of seventy or eighty years between birth and death, but is, rather, Eternity itself.

Sri Chinmoy

I love to read autobiographies. [What is your favorite autobiography?] the autobiography of Coach John Wooden. Everybody has a struggle so it's about seeing how they overcome it and be the best they can.

Meb Keflezighi

Writing can be a bit like unfolding something...Slowly, the writer reveals what's happening. But that's only half of what's going on. Writers are very cunning people who are not only unfolding and revealing. Just like conjurors and magicians, they are hiding stuff too.

Michael Rosen

to look back on one's life is to experience the capriciousness of memory. ... the past is not static. It can be relived only in memory, and memory is a device for forgetting as well as remembering. It, too, is not immutable. It rediscovers, reinvents, reorganizes. Like a passage of prose it can be revised and repunctuated. To that extent, every autobiography is a work of fiction and every work of fiction an autobiography.

P. D. James

If the players aren't getting paid, there's something terribly, terribly wrong, and that's true only in the United States. Everywhere else, where money is involved with sport, the players get paid. But these poor kids in college, they're doing it for free, and that's just disgraceful.