← In Sugarcandy Mountain it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew on the hedges. 🔊
← Then they sang Beasts of England from end to end seven times running, and after that they settled down for the night and slept as they had never slept before. 🔊
← They explained that by their studies of the past three months the pigs had succeeded in reducing the principles of Animalism to Seven Commandments. 🔊
← These Seven Commandments would now be inscribed on the wall; they would form an unalterable law by which all the animals on Animal Farm must live for ever after. 🔊
← THE SEVEN COMMANDMENTS 1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. 🔊
← As for the pigs, they could already read and write perfectly. The dogs learned to read fairly well, but were not interested in reading anything except the Seven Commandments. 🔊
← It was also found that the stupider animals, such as the sheep, hens, and ducks, were unable to learn the Seven Commandments by heart. 🔊
← After much thought Snowball declared that the Seven Commandments could in effect be reduced to a single maxim, namely: "Four legs good, two legs bad." 🔊
← FOUR LEGS GOOD, TWO LEGS BAD, was inscribed on the end wall of the barn, above the Seven Commandments and in bigger letters. 🔊
← Boxer passed it off as usual with "Napoleon is always right!", but Clover, who thought she remembered a definite ruling against beds, went to the end of the barn and tried to puzzle out the Seven Commandments which were inscribed there. 🔊
← Napoleon approved of this poem and caused it to be inscribed on the wall of the big barn, at the opposite end from the Seven Commandments. 🔊
← But when the animals saw the green flag flying, and heard the gun firing again−seven times it was fired in all−and heard the speech that Napoleon made, congratulating them on their conduct, it did seem to them after all that they had won a great victory. 🔊
← It was a moonlit night. At the foot of the end wall of the big barn, where the Seven Commandments were written, there lay a ladder broken in two pieces. 🔊
← But a few days later Muriel, reading over the Seven Commandments to herself, noticed that there was yet another of them which the animals had remembered wrong. 🔊
← At the beginning, when the laws of Animal Farm were first formulated, the retiring age had been fixed for horses and pigs at twelve, for cows at fourteen, for dogs at nine, for sheep at seven, and for hens and geese at five. 🔊
← And when they heard the gun booming and saw the green flag fluttering at the masthead, their hearts swelled with imperishable pride, and the talk turned always towards the old heroic days, the expulsion of Jones, the writing of the Seven Commandments, the great battles in which the human invaders had been defeated. 🔊
← Without saying anything, she tugged gently at his mane and led him round to the end of the big barn, where the Seven Commandments were written. 🔊
← But it appears to me that that wall looks different. Are the Seven Commandments the same as they used to be, Benjamin?" 🔊