Evelyn Waugh: Quotes about people

Evelyn Waugh was British writer. Explore interesting quotes on people.

Evelyn Waugh: 246 quotes8 likes

“It doesn't matter what people call you unless they call you pigeon pie and eat you up.”

Part 2, Chapter 3
Brideshead Revisited (1945)
Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“You can't ever tell what's going to hurt people.”

Evelyn Waugh book A Handful of Dust

Source: A Handful of Dust

“But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into the depths of confusion you didn't know existed.”

Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“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 book Vile Bodies

Source: Vile Bodies

“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 book Scoop

Scoop (1938)

“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)

“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)

“Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.”

Evelyn Waugh book Decline and Fall

Decline and Fall (1928)

“"We, Seth, Emperor of Azania, Chief of Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas, Bachelor of the Arts of Oxford University, being in this the twenty-fourth year of our life, summoned by the wisdom of Almighty God and the unanimous voice of our people to the throne of our ancestors, do hereby proclaim…" Seth paused in his dictation and gazed out across the harbour where in the fresh breeze of early morning the last dhow was setting sail for the open sea. "Rats," he said; "stinking curs. They are all running away."”

Evelyn Waugh book Black Mischief

First lines
Black Mischief (1932)

“What is this impulse of two people to build their beastly home? It's you & me, unborn, asserting our presence. All we are is a manifestation of the impulse to family life, and if by chance we have escaped the itch ourselves, Nature forces it upon us another way.”

Evelyn Waugh book Decline and Fall

Part One, Chapter XII
Decline and Fall (1928)

“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.”

Evelyn Waugh book Decline and Fall

Decline and Fall (1928)

“We, Seth, Emperor of Azania, Chief of Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas, Bachelor of the Arts of Oxford University, being in this the twenty-fourth year of our life, summoned by the wisdom of Almighty God and the unanimous voice of our people to the throne of our ancestors, do hereby proclaim...”

Evelyn Waugh book Black Mischief

Seth paused in his dictation and gazed out across the harbour where in the fresh breeze of early morning the last dhow was setting sail for the open sea. "Rats," he said; "stinking curs. They are all running away."
First lines
Black Mischief (1932)