Evelyn Waugh Quotes - Page 8

Never get mixed up in a Welsh wrangle. It doesn't end in blows like an Irish one, but goes on forever.

The worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without Him. Julia to Charles

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

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

Now we shall both be alone, and I shall have no way of making you understand.' 'I don't want to make it easier for you,' I said; 'I hope your heart may break; but I do understand.

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

When I reached C Company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning.

I have no technical psychological interest; it is drama, speech,and events that interest me.

In the dying world I come from, quotation is a national vice.

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

How ungenerously in later life we disclaim the virtuous moods of our youth, living in retrospect long, summer days of unreflecting dissipation.

But in the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. No one would think of making an after-dinner speech without the help of poetry. It used to be the classics, now it’s lyric verse.

The languor of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost!

...she had regained what I thought she had lost forever, the magical sadness which had drawn me to her, the thwarted look that had seemed to say, "Surely I was made for some other purpose than this?

These memories, which are my life--for we possess nothing certainly except the past--were always with me.

Yes, cider and tinned salmon are the staple diet of the agricultural classes.

"What war?" said the Prime Minister sharply. "No one has said anything to me about a war. I really think I should have been told. I'll be damned," he said defiantly, "if they shall have a war without consulting me. What's a cabinet for, if there's not more mutual confidence than that? What do they want a war for anyway?"

Dearest Charles-- I found a box of this paper at the back of a bureau so I must write to you as I am mourning for my lost innocence. It never looked like living. The doctors despaired of it from the start... I am never quite alone. Members of my family keep turning up and collecting luggage and going away again, but the white raspberries are ripe. I have a good mind not to take Aloysius to Venice. I don't want him to meet a lot of horrid Italian bears and pick up bad habits. Love or what you will. S.

You can't ever tell what's going to hurt people.

Conversation should be like juggling; up go the balls and the plates, up and over, in and out, good solid objects that glitter in the footlights and fall with a bang if you miss them. But when dear Sebastian speaks it is like a little sphere of soapsud drifting off the end of an old clay pipe, anywhere, full of rainbow light for a second and then - phut! vanished, with nothing left at all, nothing.

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.

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

Of children as of procreation -- the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable