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
art drama blow
The Welsh are the only nation in the world that has produced no graphic or plastic art, no architecture, no drama. They just sing. Sing and blow down wind instruments of plated silver.
thinking table-manners tables
I think to be oversensitive about cliches is like being oversensitive about table manners.
daughter integrity son
From the earliest times the Welsh have been looked upon as an unclean people. It is thus that they have preserved their racial integrity. Their sons and daughters rarely mate with humankind except their own blood relations.
deceit needs steps
The tourist debauches the great monuments of antiquity, a comic figure, always inapt in his comments, incongruous in his appearance; ...avarice and deceit attack him at every step; the shops that he patronizes are full of forgeries... But we need feel no scruple or twinge of uncertainty; 'we' are travelers and cosmopolitans; the tourist is the other fellow.
knowing people helping
MGM bores me when I see them, but I don't see them much. They have been a help in getting me introductions to morticians, who are the only people worth knowing.
education long enough
I have been in the scholastic profession long enough to know that nobody enters it unless he has some very good reason that he is anxious to conceal.
dying world vices
In the dying world I come from, quotation is a national vice.
dust two smell
Of the many smells of Athens two seem to me the most characteristic - that of garlic, bold and deadly like acetylene gas. and that of dust, soft and warm and caressing like tweed.
travel real pieces
I [had] added another small piece to the pages of the atlas that were real to me.
writing careers healthy
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.
writing curiosity age
Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.
sleep years needs
I haven't been to sleep for over a year. That's why I go to bed early. One needs more rest if one doesn't sleep.
writing departure metaphor
Words have basic inalienable meanings, departure from which is either conscious metaphor or inexcusable vulgarity.
country literature censorship
If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside.