Evelyn Waugh Quotes

United Kingdom, Novelist
October 28, 1903 – April, 10, 1966.

Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books, and he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires Decline and Fall 1928 and A Handful of Dust 1934, the novel Brideshead Revisited 1945, and the Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour 1952–61. He is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century.

I can't bare you when you're not amusing.

Evelyn Waugh
- Amusing
- When
- Bare
Novel-writing is a highly skilled and laborious trade. One does not just sit behind a screen jotting down other people's conversation. One has for one's raw material every single thing one has ever seen or heard or felt, and one has to go over that vast, smoldering rubbish-heap of experience, half stifled by fumes and dust, scraping and delving until one finds a few discarded valuables. Then one has to assemble these tarnished and dented fragments, polish them, set them in order, and try to make a coherent and significant arrangement of them.

Evelyn Waugh

Beer commercials are so patriotic: Made the American Way. What does that have to do with America? Is that what America stands for? Feeling sluggish and urinating frequently?

Evelyn Waugh
Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.

Evelyn Waugh
- Virtue
- Bored
- Punctuality
There is something incomparably thrilling in first opening a brand new book.

Evelyn Waugh
- Book
- Something
- Brand
... To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.

Evelyn Waugh
- Know
- Wisdom
- Human
One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.

Evelyn Waugh
- Die
- Names
- Constant
We are American at puberty. We die French.

Evelyn Waugh
- American
- French
- Puberty

You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.

Evelyn Waugh
If politicians and scientists were lazier, how much happier we should all be

Evelyn Waugh
I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then, when I'm old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.

Evelyn Waugh
- Remember
- Happy
- Miserable
We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them...

Evelyn Waugh
- Friends
- Ability
- Cherish
Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.

Evelyn Waugh
- Future
- Present
- Feel
The great charm in argument is really finding one's own opinions, not other people's.

Evelyn Waugh
- Great
- Argument
- Opinions

Your actions, and your action alone, determines your worth.

Evelyn Waugh
- Alone
- Actions
- Determines