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Evelyn Waugh: 246 quotes8 likes

“…But I saw today there was one thing unforgivable - like things in the school-room, so bad they were unpunishable, that only mummy could deal with - the bad thing I was on the point of doing, that I'm not quite bad enough to do; to set up a rival good to God's.”

Evelyn Waugh book Brideshead Revisited

Part 3, near end of chapter 5
Brideshead Revisited (1945)

“A copy of Dante's Purgatorio excited his especial disgust."French, eh?" he said. "I guessed as much, and pretty dirty too, I shouldn't wonder. Now just you wait while I look up these here books"—how he said it!—"in my list. Particularly against books the Home Secretary is. If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside."”

Evelyn Waugh book Vile Bodies

Source: Vile Bodies (1930), Chapter 2

“The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant they are”

Evelyn Waugh book Brideshead Revisited

Part 1, Chapter 3
Brideshead Revisited (1945)

“It's the seed of life we carry about with us like our skeletons, each one of us unconsciously pregnant with desirable villa residences. There's no escape. As individuals we simply do not exist. We are just potential home builders, beavers, and ants. How do we come into being? What is birth?”

Evelyn Waugh book Decline and Fall

Part One, Chapter XII
Decline and Fall (1928)

“It is a curious thing… that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.”

Evelyn Waugh book Put Out More Flags

Source: Put Out More Flags (1942), Ch. 1: Autumn, § 7

“I came to the conclusion many years ago that almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.”

Evelyn Waugh book Decline and Fall

Decline and Fall (1928)

“And the only interest about him arises from the unusual series of events of which his shadow was witness.”

Evelyn Waugh book Decline and Fall

Decline and Fall (1928)

“She seemed to say "Look at me. I have done my share. I am beautiful. It is something quite out of the ordinary, this beauty of mine. I am made for delight. But what do I get out of it? Where is my reward?"”

Evelyn Waugh book Brideshead Revisited

Part 3, Chapter 4
Brideshead Revisited (1945)

“I put the words down and push them a bit.”

As quoted in his obituary in The New York Times (11 April 1966)

“perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; vagabond-language scrawled on gate-posts and paving-stones along the weary road that others have tramped before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.”

Evelyn Waugh book Brideshead Revisited

Brideshead Revisited (1945)

“Please bear in mind throughout that IT IS MEANT TO BE FUNNY.”

Evelyn Waugh book Decline and Fall

Author's note
Decline and Fall (1928)

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

Evelyn Waugh book Decline and Fall

Decline and Fall (1928)

“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 book Decline and Fall

Decline and Fall (1928)

“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.”

As quoted in LIFE magazine (8 April 1946)

“There will be a prize of half a crown for the longest essay, irrespective of any possible merit.”

Evelyn Waugh book Decline and Fall

Decline and Fall (1928)

“Aesthetic value is often the by-product of the artist striving to do something else.”

Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (1976)

“Lord Copper quite often gave banquets; it would be an understatement to say that no one enjoyed them more than the host, for no one else enjoyed them at all, while Lord Copper positively exulted in every minute.”

Evelyn Waugh book Scoop

Scoop (1938)

“Of children as of procreation— the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable.”

Letter to Nancy Mitford, May 5, 1954, cited from Mark Amory (ed.) The Letters of Evelyn Waugh (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982) p. 423
"The pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable" is sometimes attributed to Lord Chesterfield (British statesman, diplomat and wit, 1694-1773), but has not been found in his works.

“Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay intimacy of the slums who find prison so soul-destroying.”

Evelyn Waugh book Decline and Fall

Decline and Fall (1928)

“We possess nothing certainly except the past.”

Evelyn Waugh book Brideshead Revisited

Part 3, start of chapter 1
Brideshead Revisited (1945)