Evelyn Waugh Quotes

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

To watch him fumbling with our rich and delicate English language is like seeing a Sevres vase in the hands of a chimpanzee.

With a thorough knowledge of the Bible, Shakespeare and Wisden, you cannot go far wrong.

No writer before the middle of the19th century wrote about the working classes other than as grotesques or as pastoral decorations. Then when they were given the vote certain writers started to suck up to them.

All fictional characters are flat.

Most of the world’s troubles seem to come from people who are too busy. If only politicians and scientists were lazier, how much happier we should all be.

We are all American at puberty; we die French.

He did not, even in his extremity, quite abandon his faith in the magic of official forms. In bumf lay salvation.

Enclosing every thin man, there’s a fat man demanding elbow room.

He sat at the cocktail bar… It wore the air of a fashion magazine, once stiff and shiny, which too many people had handled.

Most writers in the course of their careers become thick-skinned and learn to accept vituperation, which in any other profession would be unimaginably offensive, as a healthy counterpoise to unintelligent praise.

Words should be an intense pleasure, just as leather should be to a shoemaker.

I do not think I shall ever forget the sight of Etna at sunset… Nothing I have ever seen in Art or Nature was quite so revolting.

Like German opera, too long and too loud.

Lady Pea bury was in the morning room reading a novel; early training gave a guilty spice to this recreation, for she had been brought up to believe that to read a novel before luncheon was one of the gravest sins it was possible for a gentlewoman to commit.

Other nations use ‘force’; we Britons alone use ‘might’.

‘I will not stand for being called a woman in my own house,’ she said.

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.

‘He’s supposed to have a particularly high-class style: ‘‘Feather footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole’’…would that be it?’ ‘Yes,’ said the Managing Editor. ‘That must be good style.’

Mr Salter’s side of the conversation was limited to expressions of assent. When Lord Copper was right, he said, ‘Definitely, Lord Copper’; when he was wrong, ‘Up to a point.’