Evelyn Waugh Quotes

You can't ever tell what's going to hurt people.

It’s awful to think that I shall probably never, as long as I live, see you dancing like that again all by yourself.

News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read.

"What is a "canty day", Dennis?'
'I've never troubled to ask. Something like hogmanay, I expect.'
'What is that?'
'People being sick on the pavement in Glasgow.'
'Oh."

Not for her the cruel, delicate luxury of choice, the indolent, cat-and-mouse pastimes of the hearth-rug. No Penelope she; she must hunt in the forest.

When people hate with all that energy, it is something in themselves they are hating.

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.

You could appreciate the beauty of the world by trying to paint it.

I can quite understand that many people may be depressed by the spectacle of naked humanity. Personally I cannot see that an ugly body is any more offensive than an ugly dress.

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.

Chokey thinks religion is just divine.

Now we shall both be alone, and I shall have no way of making you understand.'
'I don't want to make it easier for you,' I said; 'I hope your heart may break; but I do understand.

The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth — all save this — come and go with us through life; again and again in riper years we experience, under a new stimulus, what we thought had been finally left behind, the authentic impulse to action, the renewal of power and its concentration on a new object; again and again a new truth is revealed to us in whose light all our previous knowledge must be rearranged.

That's the public-school system all over. They may kick you out, but they never let you down.

If it could only be like this always – always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe and Aloysius in a good temper...