Top 100 Evelyn Waugh Quotes
#1. A necklace of pearls on a white neck.
We had lost the sense of discovery which had infused the anarchy of our first year. I began to settle down.
... the old house in the foreground, the rest of the world abandoned and forgotten; a world of its own of peace and love and beauty ...
Evelyn Waugh
#2. One can write, think and pray exclusively of others; dreams are all egocentric.
Evelyn Waugh
#3. He took a large tablet of beet sugar (an equivalent quantity of ordinary lump sugar does equally well) and soaked it in Angostura Bitters and then rolled it in Cayenne pepper. This he put into a large glass which he filled up with champagne. The excellences of this drink defy description.
Evelyn Waugh
#4. If a thing's worth doing at all, it's worth doing well.
Evelyn Waugh
#5. O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin,
Evelyn Waugh
#6. There is nothing to be gained by multiplying social distinctions indefinitely.
Evelyn Waugh
#7. Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.
Evelyn Waugh
#8. Your colleague, Captain Grimes, has been convicted before me on evidence that leaves no possibility of his innocence - of a crime (I might almost call it a course of action) which I can neither understand nor excuse. I dare say I need not particularise.
Evelyn Waugh
#9. Most writers in the course of their careers become thick-skinned and learn to accept vituperation, which in any other profession would be unimaginably offensive, as a healthy counterpoise to unintelligent praise.
Evelyn Waugh
#11. She had regained what I thought she had lost forever, the magical sadness which had drawn me to her, the thwarted look that had seemed to say, Surely I was made for some other purpose than this?
Evelyn Waugh
#12. I have been in the scholastic profession long enough to know that nobody enters it unless he has some very good reason that he is anxious to conceal.
Evelyn Waugh
#13. Remember that, however patient your study, you will never in adult life learn any language perfectly; the best you can hope for is to be a bore.
Evelyn Waugh
#14. Faster ... Faster ... it'll stop all right when the time comes ...
Evelyn Waugh
#15. He had no strength for any other war than his own solitary struggle to keep alive.
Evelyn Waugh
#16. The audiences certainly have [declined]. If I go to the theatre now I find people come there to eat and smoke and talk to one another. And look like scarecrows.
Evelyn Waugh
#17. Suffering is none the less acute and much more lasting when it is put into words.
Evelyn Waugh
#18. Downstairs Peter Beste-Chetwynde mixed himself another brandy and soda and turned a page in Havelock Ellis, which, next to The Wind in the Willows, was his favourite book.
Evelyn Waugh
#19. Creative Endeavour lost her wings, Mrs Ape.
Evelyn Waugh
#20. Not everyone grows to be old, but everyone has been younger than he is now.
Evelyn Waugh
#21. You seem to find everything banal." "it's a new word whose correct use i have only lately learnt,' said josephine with dignity. 'i find it applies to nearly everything.
Evelyn Waugh
#22. Every Englishman abroad, until it is proved to the contrary, likes to consider himself a traveller and not a tourist.
Evelyn Waugh
#23. A work of art is not a matter of thinking beautiful thoughts or experiencing tender emotions , but of intelligence, skill, taste, proportion, knowledge, discipline and industry; especially discipline.
Evelyn Waugh
#24. This war has begun in darkness and it will end in silence.
Evelyn Waugh
#25. But in the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. No one would think of making an after-dinner speech without the help of poetry. It used to be the classics, now it's lyric verse.
Evelyn Waugh
#26. Don't hold your parents up to contempt. After all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them.
Evelyn Waugh
#27. As my intimacy with his family grew, I became part of the world which he sought to escape; I became one of the bonds which held him.
Evelyn Waugh
#28. Rex has never been unkind to me intentionally. It's just that he isn't a real person at all; he's just a few faculties of a man highly developed; the rest simply isn't there.
Evelyn Waugh
#29. You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.
Evelyn Waugh
#30. It is no longer possible to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis upon which it is based.
Evelyn Waugh
#31. At night his most frequent recurring dream was of doing The Times crossword puzzle; his most disagreeable that he was reading a tedious book aloud to his family.
Evelyn Waugh
#32. The tour bus was supposed to be here ten minutes ago. Would it be possible to give them a ring to check they've not forgotten us?
Evelyn Waugh
#33. He did not fail in love, but he lost the joy of it [...]
Evelyn Waugh
#34. He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich.
Evelyn Waugh
#35. I said to the doctor, who was with us daily. 'He's got a wonderful will to live, hasn't he?'
'Would you put it like that? I should say a great fear of death.'
'Is there a difference?'
'Oh dear, yes. He doesn't derive any strength from his fear, you know. It's wearing him out.
Evelyn Waugh
#36. When the waterholes were dry, people sought to drink at the mirage.
Evelyn Waugh
#37. One does not travel, any more than one falls in love, to collect material. It is simply part of one's life ...
Evelyn Waugh
#38. It's a great thing in life to have a place you can't be moved from - too few of them
Evelyn Waugh
#39. Evelyn Waugh: How do you get your main pleasure in life, Sir William?
Sir William Beveridge: I get mine trying to leave the world a better place than I found it.
Waugh: I get mine spreading alarm and despondency and I get more satisfaction than you do.
Evelyn Waugh
#40. In the dying world I come from, quotation is a national vice.
Evelyn Waugh
#41. Then there was the concert where the boys refused to sing 'God Save the King' because of the pudding they had had for luncheon. One way and another, I have been consistently unfortunate in my efforts at festivity. And yet I look forward to each new fiasco with the utmost relish.
Evelyn Waugh
#42. I am sorry to disturb you,' said James politely, 'but these people wished to shoot us.
Evelyn Waugh
#43. It (modernization) is just another jungle closing in.
Evelyn Waugh
#44. MGM bores me when I see them, but I don't see them much. They have been a help in getting me introductions to morticians, who are the only people worth knowing.
Evelyn Waugh
#45. If Brideshead Revisited is not a great book, it's so like a great book that many of us, at least while reading it, find it hard to tell the difference.
Evelyn Waugh
#46. Yes, I was determined to have a happy Christmas' 'Did you?' 'I think so. I don't remember it much, and that's always a good sign, isn't it?
Evelyn Waugh
#47. Pray always for all the learned, the oblique, the delicate. Let them not be quite forgotten at the throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom.
Evelyn Waugh
#48. Winston Churchill is always expecting rabbits to come out of an empty hat.
Evelyn Waugh
#49. Have you at any time been detained in a mental home or similar institution? If so, give particulars.'
'I was at Scone College, Oxford, for two years,' said Paul.
Evelyn Waugh
#50. Yes, cider and tinned salmon are the staple diet of the agricultural classes.
Evelyn Waugh
#51. His strongest tastes were negative. He abhorred plastics, Picasso, sunbathing, and jazz
everything in fact that had happened in his own lifetime. The tiny kindling of charity which came to him through his religion sufficed only to temper his disgust and change it to boredom ...
Evelyn Waugh
#53. You can't ever tell what's going to hurt people.
Evelyn Waugh
#55. There is a species of person called a 'Modern Churchman' who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not commit himself to any religious belief.
Evelyn Waugh
#56. Frankly," said the Doctor, "I am at a loss to understand my own emotions. I can think of no entertainment that fills me with greater detestation than a display of competitive athletics, none - except possibly folk dancing.
Evelyn Waugh
#57. I think to be oversensitive about cliches is like being oversensitive about table manners.
Evelyn Waugh
#58. But I don't know a word of German, I've had no experience, I've got no testimonials, and I can't play cricket.'
'It doesn't do to be too modest,' said Mr Levy. 'It's wonderful what one can teach when one tries.
Evelyn Waugh
#60. The fortnight at Venice passed quickly and sweetly
perhaps too sweetly; I was drowning in honey, stingless.
Evelyn Waugh
#61. I'm one of the blind alleys off the main road of procreation.
Evelyn Waugh
#62. My unhealthy affection for my second daughter has waned. Now I despise all my seven children equally.
Evelyn Waugh
#63. Almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.
Evelyn Waugh
#64. There was one thing unforgivable, like things in the schoolroom so bad that only Mommy could deal with, to set up a rival good to God's.
Evelyn Waugh
#66. His courtesy was somewhat extravagant. He would write and thank people who wrote to thank him for wedding presents and when he encountered anyone as punctilious as himself the correspondence ended only with death.
Evelyn Waugh
#67. I suppose it's something to do with her black-brained religion not to take care of the body.
Evelyn Waugh
#68. I did not know it was possible to be so miserable and live but I am told that this is a common experience.
Evelyn Waugh
#69. Ah well, to the journalist every country is rich.
Evelyn Waugh
#70. When we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them.
Evelyn Waugh
#71. I returned to London in the spring of 1926 for the General Strike. It was the topic of Paris. The French, exultant as always at the discomfiture of their former friends, and transposing into their own precise terms our mistier notions from across the Channel, foretold revolution and civil
Evelyn Waugh
#72. Adore having you. It's only Ian; he was saying tonight he wondered if you wouldn't feel more comfortable if you paid something ...
Evelyn Waugh
#73. At first it was impressive, but after half and hour deadly monotonous. It was like everything German - overdone.
Evelyn Waugh
#74. I am suing Lord Beaverbrook for libel and hope for some lovely tax-free money in damages. He has very conveniently told some lies about me.
Evelyn Waugh
#75. How ungenerously in later life we disclaim the virtuous moods of our youth, living in retrospect long, summer days of unreflecting dissipation.
Evelyn Waugh
#76. Do you want to change?"
"It's the only evidence of life.
Evelyn Waugh
#77. Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole.'
William Boot
Evelyn Waugh
#78. No one will write books once they reach heaven, but there is an excellent library, containing all the books written up to date, including all the lost books and the ones that the authors burned when they came back from the last publisher.
Evelyn Waugh
#79. I have no technical psychological interest; it is drama, speech,and events that interest me.
Evelyn Waugh
#80. That day was the beginning of my friendship with Sebastian, and thus it came about, that morning in June, that I was lying beside him in the shade of the high elms watching the smoke from his lips drift up into the branches.
Evelyn Waugh
#81. She was daily surprised by the things he knew and the things he did not know; both, at the time, added to his attraction.
Evelyn Waugh
#82. I can quite understand that many people may be depressed by the spectacle of naked humanity. Personally I cannot see that an ugly body is any more offensive than an ugly dress.
Evelyn Waugh
#83. The understatement, the self-ridicule, the delight in the foreignness of foreigners, the complete denial of any attempt to enlist the sympathies of his readers in the hardships he has capriciously invited.
Evelyn Waugh
#84. I have a good mind not to take Aloysius to Venice. I don't want him to meet a lot of horrid Italian bears and pick up bad habits.
Evelyn Waugh
#85. Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.
Evelyn Waugh
#87. For in that city [New York] there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.
Evelyn Waugh
#88. What is it about being on a boat that makes everyone behave like a film star?
Julia Flyte
Evelyn Waugh
#89. I've just been to Greece to see the buildings there,' said Professor Silenus. 'Did you like them?' 'They are unspeakably ugly. But there were some nice goats.
Evelyn Waugh
#90. I do not believe the expenditure of $2.50 for a book entitles the purchaser to the personal friendship of the author.
Evelyn Waugh
#91. Prescribed exercise, still ran through boskage between the partisan bivouacs. The circle of villas in the outskirts of the town abandoned precipitately by their owners had been allotted by the partisans to various official purposes. In the largest of these the Russian mission lurked invisibly.
Evelyn Waugh
#92. Port is not for the very young, the vain and the active. It is the comfort of age and the companion of the scholar and the philosopher
Evelyn Waugh
#93. Chokey cholmondley: "i sure am crazy about culture".
Evelyn Waugh
#94. I am annoyed to find myself continually described by people whom I have never set eyes on as bad-tempered.
Evelyn Waugh
#95. Now we shall both be alone, and I shall have no way of making you understand.'
'I don't want to make it easier for you,' I said; 'I hope your heart may break; but I do understand.
Evelyn Waugh
#97. He delighted in writing, in the joinery and embellishment of his sentences, in the consciousness of high rare virtue when every word had been used in its purest and most precise sense, in the kitten games of syntax and rhetoric. Words could do anything except generate their own meaning.
Evelyn Waugh
#98. What is youth except a man or woman before it is ready or fit to be seen?
Evelyn Waugh
#99. Ought we to be drunk every night?" Sebastian asked one morning.
"Yes, I think so."
"I think so too.
Evelyn Waugh
#100. A typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it.
Evelyn Waugh
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