Evelyn Waugh Quotes

Creative Endeavour lost her wings, Mrs Ape.

Downstairs Peter Beste-Chetwynde mixed himself another brandy and soda and turned a page in Havelock Ellis, which, next to The Wind in the Willows, was his favourite book.

We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them -- a diminishing number in my case.

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.

He was entrancing, with that epicene beauty which in extreme youth sings aloud for love and withers at the first cold wind.

Never get mixed up in a Welsh wrangle. It doesn't end in blows like an Irish one, but goes on forever.

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?

There could be no eldest son for her, and younger sons were indelicate things, necessary, but not to be much spoken of. Younger sons had none of the privileges of obscurity; it was their plain duty to remain hidden until some disaster perchance promoted them to their brother's places, and, since this was their function, it was desirable that they should keep themselves wholly suitable for succession.

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.

Mrs. Ape's famous hymn, There ain't no flies on the Lamb of God.

O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin.

...for in that city [New York] there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.

We could watch the madmen, on clement days, sauntering and skipping among the trim gravel walks and pleasantly planted lawns; happy collaborationists who had given up the unequal struggle, all doubts resolved, all duty done, the undisputed heirs-at-law of a century of progress, enjoying the heritage at their ease.

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.

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