Evelyn Waugh

“Creative Endeavour lost her wings, Mrs Ape.”

— Evelyn Waugh

“Up to a point, Lord Copper.”

— Evelyn Waugh

“...that kernel of gaiety that never breaks.”

— Evelyn Waugh

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.

— Evelyn Waugh

We are American at puberty. We die French.

— Evelyn Waugh

No one is ever holy without suffering.

— Evelyn Waugh

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

— Evelyn Waugh

What are the others for?

— Evelyn Waugh

The great charm in argument is really finding one's own opinions, not other people's.

— Evelyn Waugh

Winston Churchill is always expecting rabbits to come out of an empty hat.

— Evelyn Waugh

You never find an Englishman among the under-dogs except in England, of course.

— Evelyn Waugh

If politicians and scientists were lazier, how much happier we should all be

— Evelyn Waugh

There's only one great evil in the world today. Despair.

— Evelyn Waugh

that is not the last word; it is not even an apt word; it is a dead word from ten years back.

— Evelyn Waugh

“Faster... Faster... it'll stop all right when the time comes...”

— Evelyn Waugh

Suffering is none the less acute and much more lasting when it is put into words.

— Evelyn Waugh

All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist any day.

— Evelyn Waugh

Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at…

— Evelyn Waugh

The Welsh are the only nation in the world that has produced no graphic or plastic art, no architecture, no drama. They…

— Evelyn Waugh

Conversation should be like juggling; up go the balls and plates, up and over, in and out, good solid objects that glitter…

— Evelyn Waugh

He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich.

— Evelyn Waugh

I have been in the scholastic profession long enough to know that nobody enters it unless he has some very good reason…

— Evelyn Waugh

Her heart was broken perhaps, but it was a small inexpensive organ of local manufacture. In a wider and grander way she…

— Evelyn Waugh

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

— Evelyn Waugh

“Sometimes," Helena continued, "I have a terrible dream of the future. Not now, but presently, people may forget their loyalty to their…

— Evelyn Waugh

“We could watch the madmen, on clement days, sauntering and skipping among the trim gravel walks and pleasantly planted lawns; happy collaborationists…

— Evelyn Waugh

“To Father Rothschild no passage was worse than any other. He thought of the sufferings of the saints, the mutability of human…

— Evelyn Waugh

“I remember no syllable of them now, but the other, more ancient lore which I acquired that term will be with me…

— Evelyn Waugh

“I'll pray for you." "That's very kind of you." "I can't spare you a whole rosary, you know. Just a decade. I've…

— Evelyn Waugh

Beware of writing to me. I always answer ... My father spent the last 20 years of his life writing letters. If…

— Evelyn Waugh

But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that…

— 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…

— Evelyn Waugh

“This was my conversion to the baroque. Here under that high and insolent dome, under those tricky ceilings; here, as I passed…

— Evelyn Waugh

“..perhaps all our lovers are merely hints and symbols; vagabond languages scrawled on gate-posts and paving stones along the weary road that…

— Evelyn Waugh

“Civilization – and by this I do not mean talking cinemas and tinned food, nor even surgery and hygienic houses, but the…

— Evelyn Waugh

The langour of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the…

— Evelyn Waugh

If, for instance, they have heard something from the postman, they attribute it to a semi-official statement; if they have fallen into…

— 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!…

— Evelyn Waugh

“I never see you now,’ she said. ‘I never seem to see anyone I like. I don’t know why.’ But she spoke…

— Evelyn Waugh

“It is possible for the rich to sin by coveting the privileges of the poor. The poor has always being the favorites…

— Evelyn Waugh