Evelyn Waugh Quotes (76 Quotes)



    The cream and hot butter mingled and overflowed separating each glucose bead of caviar from its fellows, capping it in white and gold.

    He wasn't a complete human being at all. He was a tiny bit of one, unnaturally developed; something in a bottle, an organ kept alive in a laboratory. I thought he was a sort of primitive savage, but he was something absolutely modern and up-to-date that only this ghastly age could produce. A tiny bit of a man pretending to be whole.

    Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a little thing, not a passing nod of recognition, and a phrase came back to me from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom.




    I felt that I was leaving part of myself behind, and that wherever I went afterwards I should feel the lack of it, and search for it hopelessly, as ghosts are said to do, frequenting the spots where they buried material treasures without which they cannot pay their way to the nether world.

    Thus strategists hesitate over the map, the few pins and lines of coloured chalk, contemplating a change in the pins and lines, a matter of inches, which outside the room, out of sight of the studious officers, may engulf the past, present and future in ruin or life. She was a symbol to herself then, lacking the life of both child and woman; victory and defeat were changes of pin and line; she knew nothing of war.



    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.

    Well, you see, she was saintly but she wasn't a saint. No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can't really hate God either. When they want to hate him and his saints they have to find something like themselves and pretend it's God and hate that. I suppose you think that's all bosh.



    If you asked me now who I am, the only answer I could give with any certainty would be my name. For the rest: my loves, my hates, down even to my deepest desires, I can no longer say whether these emotions are my own, or stolen from those I once so desperately wished to be.

    I've always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. ... Or it may be a private bargain between me and God, that if I give up this one thing I want so much, however bad I am, He won't quite despair of me in the end.

    My dear, I should like to stick you full of barbed arrows like a p-p-pin cushion...Where do you lurk? I shall come down your burrow and ch-chivvy you out like an old st-t-toat.

    No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can't really hate God either. When they want to Hate Him and His saints they have to find something like themselves and pretends it's God and hate that.



    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.


    That was the change in her from ten years ago; that, indeed, was her reward, this haunting, magical sadness which spoke straight to the heart and struck silence; it was the completion of her beauty.

    In the dying world I come from, quotation is a national vice.

    Almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.

    Money is only useful when you get rid of it. It is like the odd card in "Old Maid"; the player who is finally left with it has lost.

    The truth is that Oxford is simply a very beautiful city in which it is convenient to segregate a certain number of the young of the nation while they are growing up.

    I expect you'll be becoming a schoolmaster sir. That's what most of the gentlemen does sir, that gets sent down for indecent behaviour.

    If, for instance, they have heard something from the postman, they attribute it to ''a semi-official statement'' if they have fallen into conversation with a stranger at a bar, they can conscientiously describe him as ''a source that has hitherto proved unimpeachable.'' It is only when the journalist is reporting a whim of his own, and one to which he attaches minor importance, that he defines it as the opinion of ''well-informed circles.''

    We class schools into four grades: leading school, first-rate school, good school and school.

    We schoolmasters must temper discretion with deceit.

    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.

    Professional reviewers read so many bad books in the course of duty that they get an unhealthy craving for arresting phrases.

    That's the public-school system all over. They may kick you out, but they never let you down.


    What is youth except a man or woman before it is ready or fit to be seen?


    A decade of shame seemed to be ending in light and reason, ... the Enemy was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off the modern age in arms.

    Saints are simply men and women who have fulfilled their natural obligation which is to approach God.

    If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside.

    I haven't been to sleep for over a year. That's why I go to bed early. One needs more rest if one doesn't sleep.

    To know and love another human being is the root of all wisdom

    What a man enjoys about a woman's clothes are his fantasies of how she would look without them

    Don't give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can't express them. Don't analyse yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments.

    When we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them.

    When Lord Copper was right he said, 'Definitely, Lord Copper' when he was wrong, 'Up to a point'.

    Of children as of procreation-the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable.

    There aren't many left like him nowadays, what with education and whisky the price it is.

    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.

    I think to be oversensitive about cliches is like being oversensitive about table manners.


    More Evelyn Waugh Quotations (Based on Topics)


    God - Man - Death & Dying - Age - Vice & Virtue - Present - Sense & Perception - Future - Manner - Life - Past - Money & Wealth - Sons - Change - Sign & Symbol - Punishment - Emotions - Woman - Leading & Managing - View All Evelyn Waugh Quotations

    More Evelyn Waugh Quotations (By Book Titles)


    - Brideshead Revisited

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