Evelyn Waugh's Quotes

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

Professional reviewers read so many bad books in the course of duty that they get an unhealthy craving for arresting phrases.

There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances.

We class schools into four grades: leading school, first-rate school, good school and school.

What is youth except a man or woman before it is ready or fit to be seen?

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

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.

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.

There is a species of person called a 'Modern Churchman' who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not commit himself to any religious belief.

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.

Don't hold your parents up to contempt. After all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them.

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

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

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

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

Not everyone grows to be old, but everyone has been younger than he is now.

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.

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

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

Money is only useful when you get rid of it. It is like the odd card in 'Old Maid'; the player who is finally left with it has lost.

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.

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

My unhealthy affection for my second daughter has waned. Now I despise all my seven children equally.