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
thinking dying world
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.
if-there-is-a-god forgiving sin
O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin,
fate
All fates are ‘worse than death’.
artist reactionaries
An artist must be a reactionary
war thinking should-have
"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?"
ideas utterance poetic
There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances.
circles bars opinion
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.
people hunger young
I know very few young people, but it seems to me that they are all possessed with an almost fatal hunger for permanence.
doors youth innocence
It is easy, retrospectively, to endow one's youth with a false precocity or a false innocence; to tamper with the dates marking one's stature on the edge of the door.
puberty dies
We are American at puberty. We die French.
wine men dowry
Wine is a bride who brings a great dowry to the man who woos her persistently and gracefully.
sex class people
Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.
blow forever goes-on
Never get mixed up in a Welsh wrangle. It doesn't end in blows like an Irish one, but goes on forever.
father son advice
My father and I were never intimate in the sense of my coming to him with confidences or seeking advice. Our relationship was rather that of host and guest. Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son.