Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waughwas an English writer of novels, biographies and travel books. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer of books. His most famous works include the early satires Decline and Falland A Handful of Dust, the novel Brideshead Revisitedand the Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour. Waugh is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth28 October 1903
luck needs manners
Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.
unique zest self
The langour of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth - all save this come and go with us through life...These things are a part of life itself; but languor - the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding, the sun standing still in the heavens and the earth throbbing to our own pulse - that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it.
weather storm orphan
Where can we hide in fair weather, we orphans of the storm?
arguing limitation
When we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them.
artist age standing-out
An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.
father son guests
Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son.
money player cards
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.
art venice museums
If every museum in the New World were emptied, if every famous building in the Old World were destroyed and only Venice saved, there would be enough there to fill a full lifetime with delight. Venice, with all its complexity and variety, is in itself the greatest surviving work of art in the world.
air iron barrels
Free as air; that's what they say- "free as air". Now they bring me my air in an iron barrel.
intense pleasure leather
Words should be an intense pleasure just as leather should be to a shoemaker.
self denial hardship
... 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.
trying world satisfaction
Evelyn Waugh: How do you get your main pleasure in life, Sir William? Sir William Beveridge: I get mine trying to leave the world a better place than I found it. Waugh: I get mine spreading alarm and despondency and I get more satisfaction than you do.
heaven mind atheism
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.
thinking excuse idiotic
I think there's almost nothing I can't excuse except perhaps worshiping graven images. That seems to be idiotic.