Evelyn Waugh Quotes

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now slipping impotently on the polished boards, now striding across the card-table, now lumbering over a rug, now withdrawn at a touch, now stretching its neck and swaying its withered, antediluvian head, became a memorable part of the evening, one of those needlehooks of experience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

I walked down the empty Broad to breakfast, as I often did on Sundays, at a tea-shop opposite Balliol. The air was full of bells from the surrounding spires and the sun, casting long shadows across the open spaces, dispelled the fears of night. The tea-shop was hushed as a library; a few solitary men in bedroom slippers from Balliol and Trinity looked up as I entered, then turned back to their Sunday newspapers. I ate my scrambled eggs and bitter marmalade with the zest which in youth follows a restless night. I lit a cigarette and sat on, while one by one the Balliol and Trinity men paid their bills and shuffled away, slip-slop, across the street to their colleges. It was nearly eleven when I left, and during my walk I heard the change-ringing cease and, all over the town, give place to the single chime which warned the city that service was about to start.

~ Evelyn Waugh

The problem of architecture as I see it is the problem of all art – the elimination of the human element from the consideration of the form.

~ Evelyn Waugh

I was thinking about honour. It's a thing that changes doesn't it? I mean, a hundred and fifty years ago we would have had to fight if challenged. Now we'd laugh. There must have been a time when it was rather an awkward question.Yes. Moral theologians were never able to stop dueling -- it took democracy to do that.And in the next war, when we are completely democratic, I expect that it will be quite honourable for officers to leave their men behind. It'll be laid down in King's Regulations as their duty-- to keep a cadre going to train new men to take the place of prisoners.Perhaps men wouldn't take too kindly to being trained by deserters.Don't you think that they'd respect them more for being fly? I reckon our trouble is that we're in the awkward stage -- like a man challenged to a duel a hundred years ago.

~ Evelyn Waugh

Peter Pastmaster and the absurdly youthful colonel of the new force were drawing up a list of suitable officers in Bratts Club. 'Most of war seems to consist of hanging about,' he said. 'Let's at least hang about with our own friends.

~ Evelyn Waugh

We, Seth, Emperor of Azania, Chief of the 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

It [being very rich] used to worry me, and I thought it wrong to have so many beautiful things when others had nothing. Now I realize that it is possible for the rich to sin by coveting the privileges of the poor. The poor have always been the favourites of God and his saints, but I believe that is is one of the special achievements of Grace to sanctify the whole of life, riches included.

~ 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

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

~ Evelyn Waugh

I’ve always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can’t shut myself out from His mercy.

~ Evelyn Waugh

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

~ Evelyn Waugh

I loved buildings that had grown silently with the centuries, catching the best of each generation while time curbed the artist's pride and the philistine's vulgarity and repaired the clumsiness of the dull workman.

~ Evelyn Waugh

I had been there before, I knew all about it.

~ Evelyn Waugh

Sebastian is in love with his own childhood. That will make him very unhappy.

~ Evelyn Waugh

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

~ Evelyn Waugh

It was not her way to make a conspicuous entry into anyone’s life, but towards the end of that week Sebastian said rather sourly: “You and mummy seem very thick,” and I realized that in fact I was being drawn into intimacy by swift, imperceptible stages, for she was impatient of any human relationship that fell short of it.

~ Evelyn Waugh

It (modernization) is just another jungle closing in.

~ Evelyn Waugh

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

~ 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

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

The way ran zigzag through a forest of pine which the bitter wind, still that morning, had turned to ice; every bough was adorned with lines of stalactite which shivered and glittered in the morning sun; every needle had a brilliant, vitreous case and when she flicked her whip at a wayside shrub she brought down a tinkling shower of ice-leaves, each the veined impression of its crisp, green counterpart.

~ Evelyn Waugh

Two wives despaired of him,’ he said. ‘When he got engaged to Sylvia, she made it a condition that he should take the cure at Zurich. And it worked. He came back in three months a different man. And he hasn't touched a drop since, even though Sylvia walked out on him.’ ‘Why did she do that?’Well, poor Charlie got rather a bore when he stopped drinking. But that’s not really the point of the story.

~ Evelyn Waugh

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

~ Evelyn Waugh

Ah well, to the journalist every country is rich.

~ Evelyn Waugh

At a banquet given in his honour Sir Jocelyn Hitchcock once modestly attributed his success in life to the habit of getting up earlier than the other fellow. But this was partly metaphorical, partly false and in case wholly relative for journalists are as a rule late risers.

~ Evelyn Waugh

As a rule there is one thing you can always count on in our job — popularity. There are plenty of disadvantages I grant you, but you are liked and respected. Ring people up any hour of the day or night, butt into their houses uninvited make them answer a string of damn fool questions when they want to do something else — they like it. Always a smile and the best of everything for the gentlemen of the Press.

~ 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

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.

~ 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.

~ Evelyn Waugh

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

~ Evelyn Waugh

Your actions, and your action alone, determines your worth.

~ Evelyn Waugh