Evelyn Waugh Quotes & Sayings

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

But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city. — Evelyn Waugh

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

The sky over London was glorious, ochre and madder, as though a dozen tropic suns were simultaneously setting round the horizon ... Everywhere the shells sparkled like Christmas baubles. — Evelyn Waugh

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. — Evelyn Waugh

Up to a point, Lord Copper. — Evelyn Waugh

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

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

Rex, in his early forties, had grown heavy and ruddy; he had lost his Canadian accent and acquired instead the hoarse, loud tone that was common to all his friends, as though their voices were perpetually strained to make themselves heard above a crowd, as though, with youth forsaking them, there was no time to wait the opportunity to speak, no time to listen, no time to reply; time for a laugh - a throaty mirthless laugh, the base currency of goodwill. — Evelyn Waugh

Of the many smells of Athens two seem to me the most characteristic - that of garlic, bold and deadly like acetylene gas. and that of dust, soft and warm and caressing like tweed. — Evelyn Waugh

We class schools, you see, into four grades: Leading School, First-rate School, Good School, and School. Frankly," said Mr Levy, "School is pretty bad ... — Evelyn Waugh

We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them. — Evelyn Waugh

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

Old boy," said Grimes, "you're in love."
"Nonsense!"
"Smitten?" said Grimes.
"No, no."
"The tender passion?"
"No."
"Cupid's jolly little darts?"
"No."
"Spring fancies, love's young dream?"
"Nonsense!"
"Not even a quickening of the pulse?"
"No."
"A sweet despair?"
"Certainly not."
"A trembling hope?"
"No."
"A frisson? a Je ne sais quoi?"
"Nothing of the sort."
"Liar!" said Grimes. — Evelyn Waugh

It is typical of Oxford, I said, to start the new year in autumn. — Evelyn Waugh

I think there's almost nothing I can't excuse except perhaps worshiping graven images. That seems to be idiotic. — Evelyn Waugh

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

What an immature, self-destructive, antiquated mischief is man! How obscure and gross his prancing and chattering on his little stage of evolution! How loathsome and beyond words boring all the thoughts and self-approval of his biological by-product! this half-formed, ill-conditioned body! this erratic, maladjusted mechanism of his soul: on one side the harmonious instincts and balanced responses of the animal, on the other the inflexible purpose of the engine, and between them man, equally alien from the being of Nature and the doing of the machine, the vile becoming! — Evelyn Waugh

It is easy, retrospectively, to endow one's youth with a false precocity or a false innocence; to tamper with the dates marking one's stature on the edge of the door. — 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

The Second World War wasn't bad provided you were with nice people. — Evelyn Waugh

If she looked further than the wedding, it was to see marriage as the beginning of individual existence, this skirmish from which one one's spurs, from which one set out on the true quests of life. — Evelyn Waugh

But I had no patience with this convent chatter. I had felt the brush take life in my hand that afternoon; I had had my finger in the great, succulent pie of creation. I was a man of the Renaissance that evening- of Browning's renaissance. I, who had walked the streets of Rome in Genoa velvet and had seen the stars through Galileo's tube, spurned the friars, with their dusty tomes, and their sunken, jealous eyes and their crabbed hair-splitting speech. — Evelyn Waugh

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

Evelyn Waugh: How do you get your main pleasure in life, Sir William?
Sir William Beveridge: I get mine trying to leave the world a better place than I found it.
Waugh: I get mine spreading alarm and despondency and I get more satisfaction than you do. — Evelyn Waugh

There are two distinct kinds of meanness - those which come of loving money and of disliking it. Mine was the latter sort. — Evelyn Waugh

The Roman Catholic Church has the unique power of keeping remote control over human souls which have once been part of her. G.K. Chesterton has compared this to the fisherman's line, which allows the fish the illusion of free play in the water and yet has him by the hook; in his own time the fisherman by a 'twitch upon the thread' draws the fish to land. — Evelyn Waugh

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

Success in this world depends on knowing exactly how little effort each job is worth ... distribution of energy ... — Evelyn Waugh

Instruction would be wasted on me. Just to give me the form and I'll sign on the dotted line. — Evelyn Waugh

There is no ordinary run of mankind, there are only individuals who are totally different. And whether a man is naked and black and stands on one foot in Sudan or is clothed in some kind of costume in a bus in England, they are still individuals of entirely different characters. — Evelyn Waugh

I used to know Brian Howard well
a dazzling young man to my innocent eyes. In later life he became very dangerous
constantly attacking people with his fists in public places
so I kept clear of him. He was consumptive but the immediate cause of his death was a broken heart. — Evelyn Waugh

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

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

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

Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole.'
William Boot — Evelyn Waugh

I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective. — Evelyn Waugh

Then they began saying, "Get hold of him. Put him in Mercury." Now as you know I have two sculptures by Brancusi and several pretty things and I did not want them to start getting rough, so I said, pacifically, "Dear sweet clodhoppers, if you knew anything of sexual psychology you would know that nothing could give me keener pleasure than to be manhandled by you meaty boys. It would be an ecstasy of the very naughtiest kind. So if any of you wishes to be my partner in joy come and seize me. If, on the other hand, you simply wish to satisfy some obscure and less easily classified libido and see me bathe, come with me quietly, dear louts, to the fountain. — Evelyn Waugh

To understand all is to forgive all. — Evelyn Waugh

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

I said to the doctor, who was with us daily. 'He's got a wonderful will to live, hasn't he?'
'Would you put it like that? I should say a great fear of death.'
'Is there a difference?'
'Oh dear, yes. He doesn't derive any strength from his fear, you know. It's wearing him out. — 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

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

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

I read the newspapers with lively interest. It is seldom that they are absolutely, point-blank wrong. That is the popular belief, but those who are in the know can usually discern an embryo of truth, a little grit of fact, like the core of a pearl, round which have been deposited the delicate layers of ornament. — Evelyn Waugh

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

You could appreciate the beauty of the world by trying to paint it. — Evelyn Waugh

Of children as of procreation
the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable — Evelyn Waugh

My father greeted me with his usual air of mild regret. — Evelyn Waugh

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

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

To Father Rothschild no passage was worse than any other. He thought of the sufferings of the saints, the mutability of human nature, the Four Last Things, and between whiles repeated snatches of the penitential psalms. — Evelyn Waugh

Not for her the cruel, delicate luxury of choice, the indolent, cat-and-mouse pastimes of the hearth-rug. No Penelope she; she must hunt in the forest. — Evelyn Waugh

It was a small tortoise with Julia's initials set in diamonds in the living shell, and this slightly obscene object, now slipping impotently on the polished boards, now striding across the card-table, now lumbering over a rug, now withdrawn at a touch, now stretching its neck and swaying its withered, antediluvian head, became a memorable part of the evening, one of those needlehooks of experience which catch the attention when larger matters are at stake. — Evelyn Waugh

Do you know last year, when I thought I was going to have a child, I'd decided to have it brought up a Catholic? I hadn't thought about religion before; I haven't since; but just at that time, when I was was waiting for the birth, I thought, 'That's the one thing I can give her. It doesn't seem to have done me much good, but my child shall have it.' It was odd, wanting to give something one had lost oneself — Evelyn Waugh

We are American at puberty. We die French. — Evelyn Waugh

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

Frankly," said the Doctor, "I am at a loss to understand my own emotions. I can think of no entertainment that fills me with greater detestation than a display of competitive athletics, none - except possibly folk dancing. — Evelyn Waugh

My dear, I could hardly keep still in my chair. I wanted to dash out of the house and leap in a taxi and say, "Take me to Charles's unhealthy pictures." Well, I went, but the gallery after luncheon was so full of absurd women in the sort of hats they should be made to eat, that I rested a little
I rested here with Cyril and Tom and these saucy boys. Then I came back at the unfashionable time of five o'clock, all agog, my dear; and what did I find? I found, my dear, a very naughty and very successful practical joke. It reminded me of dear Sebastian when he liked so much to dress up in false whiskers. It was charm again, my dear, simple, creamy English charm, playing tigers. — Evelyn Waugh

When the waterholes were dry, people sought to drink at the mirage. — Evelyn Waugh

Even on that convivial evening I could feel my host emanating little magnetic waves of social uneasiness, creating, rather, a pool of general embarrassment about himself in which he floated with log-like calm. — Evelyn Waugh

Faster ... Faster ... it'll stop all right when the time comes ... — Evelyn Waugh

Words have basic inalienable meanings, departure from which is either conscious metaphor or inexcusable vulgarity. — Evelyn Waugh

Miss Runcible wore trousers and Miles touched up his eye-lashes in the dining-room of the hotel where they stopped for luncheon. So they were asked to leave. — 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

He was entrancing, with that epicene beauty which in extreme youth sings aloud for love and withers at the first cold wind. — Evelyn Waugh

Her heart was broken perhaps, but it was a small inexpensive organ of local manufacture. In a wider and grander way she felt things had been simplified. — Evelyn Waugh

There could be no eldest son for her, and younger sons were indelicate things, necessary, but not to be much spoken of. Younger sons had none of the privileges of obscurity; it was their plain duty to remain hidden until some disaster perchance promoted them to their brother's places, and, since this was their function, it was desirable that they should keep themselves wholly suitable for succession. — Evelyn Waugh

We possess nothing certainly except the past — Evelyn Waugh

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

Any one 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, Paul learned, who find prison so soul destroying. — Evelyn Waugh

She was daily surprised by the things he knew and the things he did not know; both, at the time, added to his attraction. — Evelyn Waugh

There is proverbially a mystery among most men of new wealth, how they made their first ten thousand; it is the qualities they showed then, before they became bullies, when every man was someone to be placated, when only hope sustained them and they could count on nothing from the world but what could be charmed from it, that make them, if they survive their triumph, successful with women. — Evelyn Waugh

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. — Evelyn Waugh

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. — Evelyn Waugh

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

The tourist debauches the great monuments of antiquity, a comic figure, always inapt in his comments, incongruous in his appearance; ... avarice and deceit attack him at every step; the shops that he patronizes are full of forgeries ... But we need feel no scruple or twinge of uncertainty; 'we' are travelers and cosmopolitans; the tourist is the other fellow. — Evelyn Waugh

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

Free as air; that's what they say- "free as air". Now they bring me my air in an iron barrel. — Evelyn Waugh

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. — Evelyn Waugh

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. — Evelyn Waugh

Julia used to say, 'Poor Sebastian. It's something chemical in him.' That was the cant phrase of the time, derived from heaven knows what misconception of popular science. 'There's something chemical between them' was used to explain the overmastering hate or love of any two people. It was the old concept of determinism in a new form. I do not believe there was anything chemical in my friend. — Evelyn Waugh

Had he not suffered unscathed the fearful dooms of all the offended gods, of all the histories, fire, brimstone, and yawning earthquakes, plague, and pestilence? Had he not stood, like the Pompeian sentry, while the Citadels of the Plain fell to ruin about his ears? — Evelyn Waugh

If every museum in the New World were emptied, if every famous building in the Old World were destroyed and only Venice saved, there would be enough there to fill a full lifetime with delight. Venice, with all its complexity and variety, is in itself the greatest surviving work of art in the world. — Evelyn Waugh

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

Beware the Anglo-Catholics. They're all sodomites with unpleasant accents." --Cousin Jasper — Evelyn Waugh

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

Other nations use 'force'; we Britons alone use 'Might'. — Evelyn Waugh

Novel-writing is a highly skilled and laborious trade. One does not just sit behind a screen jotting down other people's conversation. One has for one's raw material every single thing one has ever seen or heard or felt, and one has to go over that vast, smoldering rubbish-heap of experience, half stifled by fumes and dust, scraping and delving until one finds a few discarded valuables. Then one has to assemble these tarnished and dented fragments, polish them, set them in order, and try to make a coherent and significant arrangement of them. — Evelyn Waugh

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

From the earliest times the Welsh have been looked upon as an unclean people. It is thus that they have preserved their racial integrity. Their sons and daughters rarely mate with humankind except their own blood relations. — Evelyn Waugh

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

It doesn't matter what people call you unless they call you pigeon pie and eat you up. — Evelyn Waugh

You spend the first term at Oxford meeting interesting and exciting people and the rest of your time there avoiding them — Evelyn Waugh

Oh, my darling, why is it that love makes me hate the world? It's supposed to have quite the opposite effect. I feel as though all mankind, and God, too, were in a conspiracy against us. — Evelyn Waugh

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

The Welsh are the only nation in the world that has produced no graphic or plastic art, no architecture, no drama. They just sing. Sing and blow down wind instruments of plated silver. — Evelyn Waugh

Ah well, to the journalist every country is rich. — Evelyn Waugh