# Down and Out in Paris and London - Author: [George Orwell](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell.md) - Quotes: 23 - Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london ## Quotes > He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him), and took a sort of pleasure in thinking that human affairs would never improve. Sometimes, he said, when sleeping on the Embankment, it had consoled him to look up at Mars or Jupiter and think that there were probably Embankment sleepers there. He had a curious theory about this. Life on earth, he said, is harsh because the planet is poor in the necessities of existence. Mars, with its cold climate and scanty water, must be far poorer, and life correspondingly harsher. Whereas on earth you are merely imprisoned for stealing sixpence, on Mars you are probably boiled alive. This thought cheered Bozo, I do not know why. He was a very exceptional man. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/he-was-an-embittered.md) > I only realized during my last week that I was being cheated, and, as I could prove nothing, only twenty-five francs were refunded. The doorkeeper played similar tricks on any employee who was fool enough to be taken in. He called himself a Greek, but in reality he was an Armenian. After knowing him I saw the force of the proverb "Trust a snake before a Jew and a Jew before a Greek, but don't trust an Armenian." [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/i-only-realized.md) > It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick you. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/it-is-fatal.md) > Beggars do not work, it is said; but then, what is work? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, bronchitis etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course — but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. And as a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others. He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout-in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/beggars-do-not.md) > Paddy and I had scarcely a wink of sleep, for there was a man near us who had some nervous trouble, shell-shock perhaps, which made him cry out 'Pip!' at irregular intervals. It was a loud, startling noise, something like the toot of a small motor-horn. You never knew when it was coming, and it was a sure preventer of sleep. ...he must have kept ten or twenty people awake every night. He was an example of the kind of thing that prevents one from ever getting enough sleep when men are herded as they are in these lodging houses.' [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/paddy-and-i-had.md) > The Paris slums are a gathering-place for eccentric people — people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent. Poverty frees them from normal standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work. Some of the lodgers in our hotel lived lives that were curious beyond words. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/the-paris-slums.md) > We crawled up to bed, tumbled down half dressed, and stayed there ten hours. Most of my Saturday nights went like this. On the whole, the two hours when one was perfectly and wildly happy seemed worth the subsequent headache. For many men in the quarter, unmarried and with no future to think of, the weekly drinking-bout was the one thing that made life worth living. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/we-crawled-up-to-bed.md) > It is curious how people take it for granted that they have a right to preach at you and pray over you as soon as your income falls below a certain level. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/it-is-curious.md) > I am trying to describe the people in our quarter, not for the mere curiosity, but because they are all part of the story. Poverty is what I am writing about, and I had my first contact with poverty in this slum. The slum, with its dirt and its queer lives, was first an object-lesson in poverty, and then the background of my own experiences. It is for that reason that I try to give some idea of what life was like there. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/i-am-trying.md) > He had two subjects of conversation, the shame and come-down of being a tramp, and the best way of getting a free meal. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/he-had-two.md) > One always abandons something in retreat. Look at Napoleon at the Beresina! He abandoned his whole army. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/one-always-abandons.md) > "Ah, the poverty, the shortness the disappointment of human joy! For in reality car en realite, what is the duration of the supreme moment of love? It is nothing, an instant, a second perhaps. A second of ecstasy, and after that- dust, ashes, nothingness." [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/ah-the-poverty.md) > Roughly speaking, the more one pays for food, the more sweat and spittle one is obliged to eat with it. ... Dirtiness is inherent in hotels and restaurants, because sound food is sacrificed to punctuality and smartness... The only food at the Hotel X which was ever prepared cleanly was the staff's. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/roughly-speaking-the.md) > Hunger reduces one to an utterly spineless, brainless condition, more like the after-effects of influenza than anything else. It is as though all one's blood had been pumped out and lukewarm water substituted. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/hunger-reduces-one.md) > Looking round that filthy room, with raw meat lying among the refuse on the floor, and cold, clotted saucepans sprawling everywhere, and the sink blocked and coated with grease, I used to wonder whether there could be a restaurant in the world as bad as ours. But the other three all said they had been in dirtier places. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/looking-round-that.md) > There is only one way to make money at writing, and that is to marry a publisher's daughter. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/there-is-only.md) > The most bitter insult one can offer to a Londoner is "bastard" — which, taken for what it means, is hardly an insult at all. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/the-most-bitter.md) > How sweet the air does smell — even the air of a back-street in the suburbs — after the shut-in, subfaecal stench of the spike! [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/how-sweet-the.md) > For, when you are approaching poverty, you make one discovery which outweighs some of the others. You discover boredom and mean complications and the beginnings of hunger, but you also discover the great redeeming feature of poverty: the fact that it annihilates the future. Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry. When you have a hundred francs in the world you are liable to the most craven panics. When you have only three francs you are quite indifferent; for three francs will feed you till tomorrow, and you cannot think further than that. You are bored, but you are not afraid. You think vaguely, 'I shall be starving in a day or two--shocking, isn't it?' And then the mind wanders to other topics. A bread and margarine diet does, to some extent, provide its own anodyne. And there is another feeling that is a great consolation in poverty. I believe everyone who has been hard up has experienced it. It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs--and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/for-when-you.md) > The whole business of swearing, especially English swearing, is mysterious. Of its very nature swearing is as irrational as magic-- indeed, it is a species of magic. But there is also a paradox about it, namely this: Our intention in swearing is to shock and wound, which we do by mentioning something that should be kept secret--usually something to do with the sexual functions. But the strange thing is that when a word is well established as a swear word, it seems to lose its original meaning; that is, it loses the thing that made it into a swear word. A word becomes an oath because it means a certain thing, and, because it has become an oath, it ceases to mean that thing. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/the-whole-business.md) > My story ends here. It is a fairly trivial story, and I can only hope that it has been interesting in the same way as a trivial diary is interesting. ... At present I do not feel I have seen more than the fringe of poverty. > > Still, I can point to one or two things I have definitely learned by being hard up. I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/my-story-ends.md) > Fate seemed to be playing a series of extraordinarily unamusing jokes. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/fate-seemed-to-be-playing.md) > Being a beggar, he said, was not his fault, and he refused either to have any compunction about it or to let it trouble him. He was the enemy of society, and quite ready to take to crime if he saw a good opportunity. He refused on principle to be thrifty. In the summer he saved nothing, spending his surplus earnings on drink, as he did not care about women. If he was penniless when winter came on, then society must look after him. He was ready to extract every penny he could from charity, provided that he was not expected to say thank you for it. He avoided religious charities, however, for he said it stuck in his throat to sing hymns for buns. He had various other points of honour; for instance, it was his boast that never in his life, even when starving, had he picked up a cigarette end. He considered himself in a class above the ordinary run of beggars, who, he said, were an abject lot, without even the decency to be ungrateful. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/being-a-beggar.md)