Evelyn Waugh Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Evelyn Waugh quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

Winston Churchill is always expecting rabbits to come out of an empty hat. — Evelyn Waugh

The anguished suspense of watching the lips you hunger for, framing the words, the death sentence, of sheer triteness! — Evelyn Waugh

Aesthetic value is often the by-product of the artist striving to do something else. — Evelyn Waugh

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. — Evelyn Waugh

Beavers bred in captivity, inhabiting a concrete pool, will, if given the timber, fatuously go through all the motions of damming an ancestral stream. — Evelyn Waugh

Of course those that have charm don't really need brains. — Evelyn Waugh

It would be a dull world if we all thought alike. — Evelyn Waugh

You'll find you spend half your second year shaking off the undesirable friends you made in your first ... — Evelyn Waugh

I have no technical psychological interest; it is drama, speech,and events that interest me. — Evelyn Waugh

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

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

After all, damn it, what does being in love mean if you can't trust a person. — Evelyn Waugh

I've usually found every Catholic family has one lapsed member, and it's often the nicest. — Evelyn Waugh

Words should be an intense pleasure just as leather should be to a shoemaker. — Evelyn Waugh

Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography. — Evelyn Waugh

It was as though Banquo had turned host. — Evelyn Waugh

One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die. — Evelyn Waugh

He did not fail in love, but he lost the joy of it [...] — Evelyn Waugh

One can write, think and pray exclusively of others; dreams are all egocentric. — Evelyn Waugh

What is it about being on a boat that makes everyone behave like a film star?
Julia Flyte — Evelyn Waugh

The fortnight at Venice passed quickly and sweetly
perhaps too sweetly; I was drowning in honey, stingless. — Evelyn Waugh

No one is ever holy without suffering. — Evelyn Waugh

O God, make me good, but not yet. — Evelyn Waugh

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

Ought we to be drunk every night?" Sebastian asked one morning.
"Yes, I think so."
"I think so too. — Evelyn Waugh

...that kernel of gaiety that never breaks. — Evelyn Waugh

So you never got to wherever it was. Weren't you terribly disappointed, Sebastian?
Julia Flyte — Evelyn Waugh

We think it a very promising little war. A microcosm, as you might say, of world drama. — Evelyn Waugh

To understand all is to forgive all. — Evelyn Waugh

She had heard someone say something about an Independent Labour Party, and was furious that she had not been asked. — Evelyn Waugh

Beerbohm was a genius of the purest kind. He stands at the summit of his art. — Evelyn Waugh

Do you want to change?"
"It's the only evidence of life. — Evelyn Waugh

An artist must be a reactionary — Evelyn Waugh

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

I had been there before; I knew all about it. — Evelyn Waugh

Brenda descended the great staircase step by step through alternations of dusk and rainbow. — Evelyn Waugh

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

I'm one of the blind alleys off the main road of procreation. — Evelyn Waugh

six black Cordelias — Evelyn Waugh

[f]ortune is the lease capricious of deities, and arranges things on the just and rigid system that no one shall be very happy for very long. — Evelyn Waugh

I suppose it's something to do with her black-brained religion not to take care of the body. — Evelyn Waugh

As there was no form of government common to the peoples thus segregated, nor tie of language, history, habit or belief, they were called a Republic. — Evelyn Waugh

[Change is] the only evidence of life. — Evelyn Waugh

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

The great charm in argument is really finding one's own opinions, not other people's. — Evelyn Waugh

He had no strength for any other war than his own solitary struggle to keep alive. — Evelyn Waugh

Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son. — Evelyn Waugh

I am sorry to disturb you,' said James politely, 'but these people wished to shoot us. — Evelyn Waugh

I never can understand how two men can write a book together; to me that's like three people getting together to have a baby. — Evelyn Waugh

The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish. — Evelyn Waugh

Every Englishman abroad, until it is proved to the contrary, likes to consider himself a traveller and not a tourist. — Evelyn Waugh

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

You can't ever tell what's going to hurt people. — Evelyn Waugh

There is nothing to be gained by multiplying social distinctions indefinitely. — Evelyn Waugh

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

A typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it. — Evelyn Waugh

There is something incomparably thrilling in first opening a brand new book. — Evelyn Waugh

That is not the last word; it is not even an apt word; it is a dead word from ten years back. — Evelyn Waugh

I regard writing not as an investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed. — Evelyn Waugh

The most futile and disastrous day seems well spent when it is reviewed through the blue, fragrant smoke of a Havana Cigar. — Evelyn Waugh

His heart; some long word at the heart. He is dying of a long word. — Evelyn Waugh

Here I am,' I thought, 'back from the jungle, back from the ruins. Here, where wealth is no longer gorgeous and power has no dignity. — Evelyn Waugh

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction. — Evelyn Waugh

What is adolescence without trash? — Evelyn Waugh

Your actions, and your action alone, determines your worth. — Evelyn Waugh

We can trace almost all the disasters of English history to the influence of Wales. — Evelyn Waugh

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

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

My unhealthy affection for my second daughter has waned. Now I despise all my seven children equally. — Evelyn Waugh

Here it seemed some of them slept for there were divan beds covered with blankets only and a large, much undenticulated, comb. — Evelyn Waugh

Chokey cholmondley: "i sure am crazy about culture". — Evelyn Waugh

I prefer all but the very worst travel books, to all but the very best novels. — Evelyn Waugh

Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic. — Evelyn Waugh

[ ... ] a sigh fit for the pillow, the sinking firelight, and a bedroom window open to the stars and the whisper of bare trees. — Evelyn Waugh

News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead. — Evelyn Waugh

All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist any day. — Evelyn Waugh

I am annoyed to find myself continually described by people whom I have never set eyes on as bad-tempered. — Evelyn Waugh

There is an Easter sense in which all things are made new in the risen Christ. A tiny gleam of this is reflected in all true art. — Evelyn Waugh

Quomondo sedet sola civitas. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. — Evelyn Waugh

There is practically no sense that is not violated every time we return from the country or the sea to Paris or London or New York. — Evelyn Waugh

[Evelyn Waugh] made drunkenness cute and chic, and then took to religion, simply to have the most expensive carpet of all to be sick on. — Rebecca West

Despite their promises at the last Election, the politicians had not yet changed the climate. — Evelyn Waugh

I can't bare you when you're not amusing. — Evelyn Waugh

Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything. — Evelyn Waugh

For in that city [New York] there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy. — Evelyn Waugh

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. — Evelyn Waugh

Never get mixed up in a Welsh wrangle. It doesn't end in blows like an Irish one, but goes on forever. — Evelyn Waugh

Soon someone would say the fatal words, Well, I think it's time for me to go to bed. — Evelyn Waugh

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

Suffering is none the less acute and much more lasting when it is put into words. — Evelyn Waugh

At first it was impressive, but after half and hour deadly monotonous. It was like everything German - overdone. — Evelyn Waugh

One does not travel, any more than one falls in love, to collect material. It is simply part of one's life ... — Evelyn Waugh

Not everyone grows to be old, but everyone has been younger than he is now. — Evelyn Waugh

If a thing's worth doing at all, it's worth doing well. — Evelyn Waugh

Yes, cider and tinned salmon are the staple diet of the agricultural classes. — Evelyn Waugh

There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances. — Evelyn Waugh

The splendid thing about education is that everyone wants it. Like influenza, you can give it away without losing any of it yourself. — Evelyn Waugh

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

I know very few young people, but it seems to me that they are all possessed with an almost fatal hunger for permanence. — Evelyn Waugh

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