431 Quotes by Evelyn Waugh

Professional reviewers read so many bad books in the course of duty that they get an unhealthy craving for arresting phrases.

Words have basic inalienable meanings, departure from which is either conscious metaphor or inexcusable vulgarity.

One can write, think and pray exclusively of others; dreams are all egocentric.

It is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.

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.

Here I am,' I thought, 'back from the jungle, back from the ruins. Here, where wealth is no longer gorgeous and power has no dignity.

We class schools into four grades: leading school, first-rate school, good school and school.

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.

Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.