431 Quotes by Evelyn Waugh

At first it was impressive, but after half and hour deadly monotonous. It was like everything German – overdone.

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

He delighted in writing, in the joinery and embellishment of his sentences, in the consciousness of high rare virtue when every word had been used in its purest and most precise sense, in the kitten games of syntax and rhetoric. Words could do anything except generate their own meaning.

We possess nothing certainly except the past.

I suppose it’s something to do with her black-brained religion not to take care of the body.

I have a good mind not to take Aloysius to Venice. I don’t want him to meet a lot of horrid Italian bears and pick up bad habits.

Of children as of procreation – the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable.

They are a very decent, generous lot of people out here and they don’t expect you to listen. Always remember that, dear boy. It’s the secret of social ease in this country. They talk entirely for their own pleasure. Nothing they say is designed to be heard.

Julia used to say, ‘Poor Sebastian. It’s something chemical in him.’ That was the cant phrase of the time, derived from heaven knows what misconception of popular science. ‘There’s something chemical between them’ was used to explain the overmastering hate or love of any two people. It was the old concept of determinism in a new form. I do not believe there was anything chemical in my friend.