Evelyn Waugh
103 quotes
Biography
"Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction."
"Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all."
"After all, damn it, what does being in love mean if you can't trust a person."
"I've always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. ... Or it may be a private bargain between me and God, that if I give up this one thing I want so much, however bad I am, He won't quite despair of me in the end."
"No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can't really hate God either. When they want to Hate Him and His saints they have to find something like themselves and pretends it's God and hate that."
"The worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without Him.Julia to Charles"
"Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a little thing, not a passing nod of recognition, and a phrase came back to me from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom."
"Success in this world depends on knowing exactly how little effort each job is worth...distribution of energy..."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Of children as of procreation— the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable."
"Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything."
"One can write, think and pray exclusively of others; dreams are all egocentric."
"A typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it.""
"I put the words down and push them a bit."
"Aesthetic value is often the by-product of the artist striving to do something else."
"We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them -- a diminishing number in my case."
"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."
"Please bear in mind throughout that IT IS MEANT TO BE FUNNY."
"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."
"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..."
"'But what am I to teach them?' said Paul in sudden panic."
"I'm one of the blind alleys off the main road of procreation."
""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)"