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Evelyn Waugh
108 quotes
“None of the great movements of the nineteenth century is more typical of its age than that for the freeing of the slaves. It depended on all those fallacies that are being abandoned today: the idea of a perfectible evolutionary man, of a responsible democratic voter, of the beneficial effect of mechanization, and, above all, on sentimental belief in the basic sweetness of human nature.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Was He Right to Free the Slaves?', The Daily Express (15 July 1933), quoted in The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Donat Gallagher (1983), p. 135
“It is not the state of slavery so much as the process of enslavement that is intolerable: and it is worth noting that the European slave trade was principally for the transport of people already enslaved. That is to say, the traders purchased captives from the warrior tribes. Undoubtedly the trade stimulated the raiding, but free blacks first captured other free blacks and then sold them to the whites.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Was He Right to Free the Slaves?', The Daily Express (15 July 1933), quoted in The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Donat Gallagher (1983), p. 136
“William Wilberforce was inflated by the true nineteenth-century arrogance of thinking that a little local uplift could reverse the development of centuries. Slave raiding has from remotest times been the hobby of the warrior tribes of Africa: slave ownership has been one of the postulates of every civilization. British wealth and British sentiment were strong enough to upset a system which, like any other, had abuses but also many redeeming virtues, but British intelligence was not up to anticipating the problem it created.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Was He Right to Free the Slaves?', The Daily Express (15 July 1933), quoted in The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Donat Gallagher (1983), p. 136
“1910–11 was a time of the wildest uncertainty and political ferment. True, those good old politicians who still figure in the cartoons were already with us, but in what different guise! Our die-hard Mr Winston Churchill was the radical Home Secretary; Mr Ramsay MacDonald was preaching class war with something very near to verbal coherence; Mr Lloyd George, whom frequent photographs have endeared to us as a benevolent landed proprietor, was inveighing against the privileges of the gentry in terms which might have been translated direct from Danton or Robespierre.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'In Quest of the Pre-War Georgian', Harper's Bazaar (May 1935), quoted in The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Donat Gallagher (1983), p. 166
“I know Spain only as a tourist and a reader of the newspapers. I am no more impressed by the "legality" of the Valencia Government than are English Communists by the legality of the Crown, Lords and Commons. I believe it was a bad Government, rapidly deteriorating. If I were a Spaniard I should be fighting for General Franco. As an Englishman I am not in the predicament of choosing between two evils. I am not a Fascist nor shall I become one unless it were the only alternative to Marxism. It is mischievous to suggest that such a choice is imminent.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Authors Take Sides on the Spanish Civil War, ed. Louis Aragon (1937)
“I believe we are in danger of a...stultifying use of the word "Fascist"... When rioters are imprisoned it is described as a "Fascist sentence"; the Means Test is Fascist; colonization is Fascist; military discipline is Fascist; patriotism is Fascist; Catholicism is Fascist; Buchmanism is Fascist; the ancient Japanese cult of their Emperor is Fascist; the Galla tribes' ancient detestation of theirs is Fascist; fox-hunting is Fascist... Is it too late to call for order?”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to The New Statesman (5 March 1938), quoted in The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Donat Gallagher (1983), p. 223
“I had warned my father that my viva might mean a second. It meant a third, and I was overcome with regret, not, I am ashamed to say, for the giddy nights, but for the sober ones. I had not done much work, but I had done some. Had I known I was only to get a third I would not have wasted my time.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Is Oxford Worth the Money?", Sunday Dispatch, 10 July 1938, page 12. Quoted in "The Sayings of Evelyn Waugh", edited by Donat Gallagher, Duckworth Sayings Series
“My father taught me that it was flagitious to leave a letter of any kind unanswered. (Indeed his courtesy was somewhat extravagant. He would write and thank people who wrote to thank him for wedding presents and when he encountered anyone as punctilious as himself the correspondence ended only with death.)”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Fan-Fare', Life (8 April 1946), p. 53
“Don't give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can't express them. Don't analyze yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reviewing World within World, the autobiography of Stephen Spender, in The Tablet (5 May 1951)
“Don't hold your parents up to contempt. After all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Tablet (9 May 1951)
“Of children as of procreation— the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Nancy Mitford, May 5, 1954, cited from Mark Amory (ed.) The Letters of Evelyn Waugh (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982) p. 423
“Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Observer (15 April 1962)
“One can write, think and pray exclusively of others; dreams are all egocentric.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary entry (5 October 1962)
“I think it great cheek of the Germans to try & teach the rest of the world anything about religion. They should be in perpetual sackcloth & ashes for all their enormities from Luther to Hitler.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lady Acton on the Second Vatican Council (15 March 1963), quoted in The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Mark Amory (1980), p. 602
“The Eastern Uniate Churches retain ancient habits of worship which are dear to them, and liturgies which in many cases are unintelligible to the faithful. Is not the time to seek similar privileges for Roman Catholics? Will you promote an appeal to the Holy See for the establishment of a Uniate Latin Church which shall observe all the rites as they existed in the reign of Pius IX?”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to the Editor of The Tablet (16 March 1963), quoted in A Bitter Trial: Evelyn Waugh and John Carmel Cardinal Heenan on the Liturgical Changes: Expanded Edition, ed. Alcuin Reid (2001), p. 47
“A typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary entry (March 1964), after hearing that doctors had removed a benign tumor from Randolph Churchill, quoted in The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Michael Davie (1976), p. 792
“When I first came into the Church I was drawn, not by splendid ceremonies but by the spectacle of the priest as a craftsman. He had an important job to do which none but he was qualified for. He and his apprentice stumped up to the altar with their tools and set to work without a glance to those behind them, still less with any intention to make a personal impression on them. "Participate" – the cant word – does not mean to make a row as the Germans suppose. One participates in a work of art when one studies it with reverence and understanding.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary entry (March 1964), quoted in The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Michael Davie (1976), p. 792
“I go to Rome for Easter (Grand Hotel) to avoid the horrors of the English liturgy.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Ann Fleming (3 March 1964), quoted in The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Mark Amory (1980), p. 618
“George Orwell wrote in 1942 at the height of his revulsion from what he regarded as the feeble hypocrisy of English socialist journalism. If he were alive today he would no doubt derive much ironic amusement from the changed position in popular esteem of the Boers in this half-century from that of the gallant little people fighting for their homesteads and way of life to that of the villains of apartheid.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Light That Did Not Wholly Fail', The Sunday Times (22 March 1964), quoted in The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Donat Gallagher (1983), p. 623
“The distinction between Catholicism and Romanità has already been stressed in the American journal Commonweal. Of course it is possible to have Faith without Romanità and to have Romanità without the Faith, but as a matter of recorded history the two have kept very close. "Peter has spoken" remains the guarantee of orthodoxy.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to the Editor of The Catholic Herald (7 August 1964), quoted in A Bitter Trial: Evelyn Waugh and John Carmel Cardinal Heenan on the Liturgical Changes: Expanded Edition, ed. Alcuin Reid (2001), p. 55
“Father Sheerin suggests that Catholic conservatism is the product of the defensive policy necessary in the last century against the nationalistic-masonic secularism of the time. I would ask him to consider that the function of the Church in every age has been conservative—to transmit undiminished and uncontaminated the creed inherited from its predecessors.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to the Editor of The Catholic Herald (7 August 1964), quoted in A Bitter Trial: Evelyn Waugh and John Carmel Cardinal Heenan on the Liturgical Changes: Expanded Edition, ed. Alcuin Reid (2001), p. 56
“[M]y friends and I are totally at a loss to understand the new form of the Mass... Every attendance at Mass leaves me without comfort or edification. I shall never, pray God, apostatize but church-going is now a bitter trial.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Archbishop Heenan (3 January 1965), quoted in A Bitter Trial: Evelyn Waugh and John Carmel Cardinal Heenan on the Liturgical Changes: Expanded Edition, ed. Alcuin Reid (2001), pp. 69, 71
“Nice to go to Rome. They are destroying all that was superficially attractive about my Church. It is a great sorrow to me and for once undeserved. If you see Cardinal Bea spit in his eye.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lady Diana Cooper (7 February 1965), quoted in A Bitter Trial: Evelyn Waugh and John Carmel Cardinal Heenan on the Liturgical Changes: Expanded Edition, ed. Alcuin Reid (2001), p. 68
“I find the new liturgy a temptation against Faith, Hope and Charity but I shall never, pray God, apostatise.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Monsignor McReavy (15 April 1965), quoted in The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Mark Amory (1980), p. 631
“A year in which the process of transforming the liturgy has followed a planned course. Protests avail nothing... More than the aesthetic changes which rob the Church of poetry, mystery and dignity, there are suggested changes in Faith and morals which alarm me. A kind of anti-clericalism is abroad which seeks to reduce the priest's unique sacramental position. The Mass is written of as a "social meal" in which the "people of God" perform the consecration. Pray God I will never apostatize but I can only now go to church as an act of duty and obedience.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary entry (Easter 1965), quoted in The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Michael Davie (1976), p. 793
“I have become very old in the last two years. Not diseased but enfeebled. There is nowhere I want to go and nothing I want to do and I am conscious of being an utter bore. The Vatican Council has knocked the guts out of me.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lady Mosley (9 March 1966), quoted in The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Mark Amory (1980), p. 638
“Easter used to mean so much to me. Before Pope John and his Council – they destroyed the beauty of the liturgy. I have not yet soaked myself in petrol and gone up in flames, but I now cling to the Faith doggedly without joy. Church going is a pure duty parade. I shall not live to see it restored. It is worse in many countries.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lady Mosley (30 March 1966), quoted in The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Mark Amory (1980), p. 639
“I put the words down and push them a bit.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in his obituary in The New York Times (11 April 1966)
“Aesthetic value is often the by-product of the artist striving to do something else.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (1976)
“Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (1976)
“We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them -- a diminishing number in my case.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (1976) p. 786
“There is a great deal to be said for the Arts. For one thing they offer the only career in which commercial failure is not necessarily discreditable.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Please bear in mind throughout that IT IS MEANT TO BE FUNNY.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mr. Sniggs, the Junior Dean, and Mr. Postlethwaite, the Domestic Bursar, sat alone in Mr. Sniggs's room overlooking the garden quad at Scone College.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Augustus Fagan, Esquire, Ph.D., Llanabba Castle, N.Wales, requires immediately junior assistant to teach Classics and English to University Standard with subsidiary Mathematics, German and French. Experience essential;first-class games essential...”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'I couldn't understand why God had made the world at all...' I asked my bishop; he didn't know. He said that he didn't think the point arose as far as my practical duties as a parish priest were concerned..' ( Mr Prendergast, Part One , Chapter IV)”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'But what am I to teach them?' said Paul in sudden panic.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm one of the blind alleys off the main road of procreation.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We class schools, you see, into four grades: Leading School, First-rate School, Good School, and School. Frankly," said Mr Levy, "School is pretty bad..." (Part One, Chapter One)”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There will be a prize of half a crown for the longest essay, irrespective of any possible merit.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Chokey thinks religion is just divine.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They should have told me that at the end of that gay journey and flower-strewn path were the hideous lights of home and the voices of children.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's the seed of life we carry about with us like our skeletons, each one of us unconsciously pregnant with desirable villa residences. There's no escape. As individuals we simply do not exist. We are just potential home builders, beavers, and ants. How do we come into being? What is birth? (Part One, Chapter XII)”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is this impulse of two people to build their beastly home? It's you & me, unborn, asserting our presence. All we are is a manifestation of the impulse to family life, and if by chance we have escaped the itch ourselves, Nature forces it upon us another way. (Part One, Chapter XII)”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't believe that people would ever fall in love or want to be married if they hadn't been told about it. It's like abroad: no one would want to go there if they hadn't been told it existed.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And the only interest about him arises from the unusual series of events of which his shadow was witness.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a species of person called a 'Modern Churchman' who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not commit himself to any religious belief”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That's the public-school system all over. They may kick you out, but they never let you down.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I came to the conclusion many years ago that almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source