Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Evelyn Waugh
108 quotes
“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.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay intimacy of the slums who find prison so soul-destroying.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Creative Endeavour lost her wings, Mrs. Ape.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mrs. Ape's famous hymn, There ain't no flies on the Lamb of God.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A copy of Dante's Purgatorio excited his especial disgust."French, eh?" he said. "I guessed as much, and pretty dirty too, I shouldn't wonder. Now just you wait while I look up these here books"—how he said it!—"in my list. Particularly against books the Home Secretary is. If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist any day.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We, Seth, Emperor of Azania, Chief of Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas, Bachelor of the Arts of Oxford University, being in this the twenty-fourth year of our life, summoned by the wisdom of Almighty God and the unanimous voice of our people to the throne of our ancestors, do hereby proclaim. . ." Seth paused in his dictation and gazed out across the harbour where in the fresh breeze of early morning the last dhow was setting sail for the open sea. "Rats," he said; "stinking curs. They are all running away.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You see my adjutant made rather a silly mistake. He hadn't had much truck with boots before and the silly fellow thought they were extra rations. My men ate the whole bag of tricks last night.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Was anyone hurt?" "No one I am thankful to say," said Mrs. Beaver, "except two housemaids who lost their heads and jumped through a glass roof into the paved court.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“While still a young man, John Courteney Boot had, as his publisher proclaimed, "achieved an assured and enviable position in contemporary letters.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As there was no form of government common to the peoples thus segregated, nor tie of language, history, habit, or belief, they were called a Republic.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Beast stands for strong mutually antagonistic governments everywhere," he said. "Self-sufficiency at home, self-assertion abroad.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Other nations use 'force'; we Britons alone use 'Might'.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I will not stand for being called a woman in my own house…”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Up to a point, Lord Copper.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lord Copper quite often gave banquets; it would be an understatement to say that no one enjoyed them more than the host, for no one else enjoyed them at all, while Lord Copper positively exulted in every minute.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So the two of them went to London by the early morning train. 'Let's surprise her,' said Nigel, but Cedric telephoned first, wryly remembering the story of the pedantic adulterer - 'My dear, it is I who am surprised; you are astounded.'”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I reached C Company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have been here before," I said; I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendour, and though I had been there so often, in so many moods, it was to that first visit that my heart returned on this, my latest.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiousity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'...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.'”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How ungenerously in later life we disclaim the virtuous moods of our youth, living in retrospect long, summer days of unreflecting dissipation. There is no candour in a story of early manhood which leaves out of account the home-sickness for nursery morality, the regrets and resolutions of amendment, the black hours which, like zero on the roulette table, turn up with roughly calculable regularity.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant they are”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is typical of Oxford," I said, "to start the new year in autumn.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“O God, make me good, but not yet”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'...I wonder if you remember the story mummy read us the evening Sebastian first got drunk - I mean the bad evening. "Father Brown" said something like "I caught him" (the thief) "with an unseen hook and and invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread."'”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It doesn't matter what people call you unless they call you pigeon pie and eat you up.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]e possess nothing certainly except the past.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She seemed to say "Look at me. I have done my share. I am beautiful. It is something quite out of the ordinary, this beauty of mine. I am made for delight. But what do I get out of it? Where is my reward?"That was the change in her from ten years ago; that, indeed, was her reward, this haunting, this magical sadness which spoke straight to the heart and struck silence; it was the completion of her beauty.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[P]erhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; vagabond-language scrawled on gate-posts and paving-stones along the weary road that others have tramped before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have lived carefully, sheltered myself from the cold winds, eaten moderately of what was in season, drunk fine claret, slept in my own sheets; I shall live long.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'...But I saw today there was one thing unforgivable - like things in the school-room, so bad they were unpunishable, that only mummy could deal with - the bad thing I was on the point of doing, that I'm not quite bad enough to do; to set up a rival good to God's.'”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Quomodo sedet sola civitas. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All day the heat had been barely supportable but at evening a breeze arose in the West, blowing from the heart of the setting sun and from the ocean, which lay unseen, unheard behind the scrubby foothills. It shook the rusty fringes of palm-leaf and swelled the dry sounds of summer, the frog-voices, the grating cicadas, and the ever present pulse of music from the neighbouring native huts.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You never find an Englishman among the under-dogs—except in England, of course.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tomorrow and on every anniversary as long as the Happier Hunting Ground existed a postcard would go to Mr. Joyboy: Your little Aimée is wagging her tail in heaven tonight, thinking of you.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It may happen in the next hundred years that the English novelists of the present day will come to be valued as we now value the artists and craftsmen of the late eighteenth century.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He had no wish to obliterate anything he had written, but he would dearly have liked to revise it, envying painters, who are allowed to return to the same theme time and time again, clarifying and enriching until they have done all they can with it. A novelist is condemned to provide a succession of novelties, new names for characters, new incidents for his plots, new scenery; but, Mr Pinfold maintained, most men harbour the germs of one or two books only; all else is professional trickery of which the most daemonic of the masters — Dickens and Balzac even — were flagrantly guilty.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“His strongest tastes were negative. He abhorred plastics, Picasso, sunbathing and jazz — everything in fact that had happened in his own lifetime.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source