Evelyn Waugh quotes - page 2

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)
My unhealthy affection for my second daughter has waned. Now I despise all my seven children equally. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
It may happen in the next hundred years that the English novelists of the present day will come to be valued as we now value the artists and craftsmen of the late eighteenth century. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
In the dying world I come from, quotation is a national vice. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
I'm one of the blind alleys off the main road of procreation. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
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. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
I couldn't understand why God had made the world at all...' I asked my bishop; he didn't know. He said that he didn't think the point arose as far as my practical duties as a parish priest were concerned.. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
Mrs. Ape's famous hymn, There ain't no flies on the Lamb of God. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
He had no wish to obliterate anything he had written, but he would dearly have liked to revise it, envying painters, who are allowed to return to the same theme time and time again, clarifying and enriching until they have done all they can with it. A novelist is condemned to provide a succession of novelties, new names for characters, new incidents for his plots, new scenery; but, Mr Pinfold maintained, most men harbour the germs of one or two books only; all else is professional trickery of which the most daemonic of the masters - Dickens and Balzac even - were flagrantly guilty. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
It doesn't matter what people call you unless they call you pigeon pie and eat you up. (Evelyn Waugh)
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. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
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. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
His strongest tastes were negative. He abhorred plastics, Picasso, sunbathing and jazz - everything in fact that had happened in his own lifetime. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
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 analyze yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
I don't believe that people would ever fall in love or want to be married if they hadn't been told about it. It's like abroad: no one would want to go there if they hadn't been told it existed. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
Aesthetic value is often the by-product of the artist striving to do something else. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
Where can we hide in fair weather, we orphans of the storm? View quote
Evelyn Waugh
We class schools into four grades: leading school, first-rate school, good school and school. (Evelyn Waugh)
Not everyone grows to be old, but everyone has been younger than he is now. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
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. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant they are. View quote
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. View quote
Evelyn Waugh