Evelyn Waugh Quotes - Page 7

I am annoyed to find myself continually described by people whom I have never set eyes on as bad-tempered.

That was the change in her from ten years ago; that, indeed, was her reward, this haunting, magical sadness which spoke straight to the heart and struck silence; it was the completion of her beauty.

I never can understand how two men can write a book together; to me that's like three people getting together to have a baby.

That's the public-school system all over. They may kick you out, but they never let you down.

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.

My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time. We possess nothing certainly except the past.

An artist must be a reactionary

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

"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."

... the understatement, the self-ridicule, the delight in the foreignness of foreigners, the complete denial of any attempt to enlist the sympathies of his readers in the hardships he has capriciously invited.

Have you at any time been detained in a mental home or similar institution? If so, give particulars.' 'I was at Scone College, Oxford, for two years,' said Paul.

If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside.

It may happen in the next hundred years that the English novelists of the present day will come to be valued as we now value the artists and craftsmen of the late eighteenth century.

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

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

Beavers bred in captivity, inhabiting a concrete pool, will, if given the timber, fatuously go through all the motions of damming an ancestral stream.

He did not fail in love, but he lost the joy of it [...]

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

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

Soon someone would say the fatal words, "Well, I think it’s time for me to go to bed.

He lay back for a little in his bed thinking about the smells of food . . . of the intoxicating breath of bakeries and dullness of buns. . . . He planned dinners, of enchanting aromatic foods . . . endless dinners, in which one could alternate flavour with flavour from sunset to dawn without satiety, while one breathed great draughts of the bouquet of old brandy.

If, for instance, they have heard something from the postman, they attribute it to a semi-official statement; if they have fallen into conversation with a stranger at a bar, they can conscientiously describe him as a source that has hitherto proved unimpeachable. It is only when the journalist is reporting a whim of his own, and one to which he attaches minor importance, that he defines it as the opinion of well-informed circles.

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?

There is practically no sense that is not violated every time we return from the country or the sea to Paris or London or New York.

I do not believe the expenditure of $2.50 for a book entitles the purchaser to the personal friendship of the author.