Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Boredom, Punctuality
Other nations use “force”; we Britons alone use “Might.”
—Evelyn Waugh
It is a curious thing that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Paradise
Saints are simply men and women who have fulfilled their natural obligation which is to approach God.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Saints
If politicians and scientist were lazier, how much happier we should all be.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Science, Scientists
One forgets words as one forgets names. One’s vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Words
You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Christianity
We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for our ability to amuse them.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Friendship, Friends
One can write, think and pray exclusively of others; dreams are all egocentric.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Dreams
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.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Prayer
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.”
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Journalism
The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Heaven
Change is the only evidence of life.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Change
Don’t give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can’t express them. Don’t analyze yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Legacy, Autobiography
He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Gift
That’s the public-school system all over. They may kick you out, but they never let you down.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Education, School
Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Manners
Anyone 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 who find prison so soul-destroying.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Prison
If we can’t stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Censorship
Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Biography, Legacy, Autobiography, Curiosity
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.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: News
In the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. It used to be the classics, now it’s lyric verse.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Quotations
Almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Criminals, Crime
An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Artists, Art, Arts
What is youth except a man or woman before it is ready or fit to be seen?
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Youth
His courtesy was somewhat extravagant. He would write and thank people who wrote to thank him for wedding presents and when he encountered anyone as punctilious as himself the correspondence ended only with death.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Courtesy, Manners
All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I’d sooner go to my dentist any day.
—Evelyn Waugh
Topics: Sex
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Israel Zangwill English Writer, Political Activist
- A. P. Herbert English Humorist, Politician
- Graham Greene British Novelist
- Anthony Powell English Novelist
- Thomas Love Peacock English Satirist
- Henry Fielding English Novelist
- George Borrow English Writer, Traveler
- Dinah Craik English Novelist, Poet
- Malcolm Muggeridge English Journalist
- Anthony Trollope English Novelist
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