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
summer long retrospect
How ungenerously in later life we disclaim the virtuous moods of our youth, living in retrospect long, summer days of unreflecting dissipation.
summer laughter flower
Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman's day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days - such as that day - when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth. It was this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamour.
summer fruit always-alone
If it could only be like this always – always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe and Aloysius in a good temper...
human love root wisdom
To know and love another human being is the root of all wisdom
becoming expect gentlemen gets indecent sent
I expect you'll be becoming a schoolmaster, sir. That's what most of the gentlemen does, sir, that gets sent down for indecent behaviour.
aesthetic almost came conclusion crime desire due expression repressed
I came to the conclusion many years ago that almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression
children expense pleasure posture
Of children as of procreation-the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable.
clothes enjoys fantasies man
What a man enjoys about a woman's clothes are his fantasies of how she would look without them
english-author except fit youth
What is youth except a man or woman before it is ready or fit to be seen?
chap english-author until wants
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.
happier scientist scientists
If politicians and scientist were lazier, how much happier we should all be.
dying english-author lyric national quotation
In the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. It used to be the classics, now it's lyric verse.
war half world
At first it was impressive, but after half and hour deadly monotonous. It was like everything German - overdone.
fall drifting-off light
Conversation should be like juggling; up go the balls and the plates, up and over, in and out, good solid objects that glitter in the footlights and fall with a bang if you miss them. But when dear Sebastian speaks it is like a little sphere of soapsud drifting off the end of an old clay pipe, anywhere, full of rainbow light for a second and then - phut! vanished, with nothing left at all, nothing.