Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waughwas an English writer of novels, biographies and travel books. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer of books. His most famous works include the early satires Decline and Falland A Handful of Dust, the novel Brideshead Revisitedand the Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour. Waugh is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth28 October 1903
retirement giving want
The splendid thing about education is that everyone wants it. Like influenza, you can give it away without losing any of it yourself.
teacher retirement deceit
We schoolmasters must temper discretion with deceit.
sky horizon shells
The sky over London was glorious, ochre and madder, as though a dozen tropic suns were simultaneously setting round the horizon . . . Everywhere the shells sparkled like Christmas baubles.
joy failing lost
He did not fail in love, but he lost the joy of it [...]
might use force
Other nations use 'force' we Britons alone use 'Might'.
sunset thinking smell
He lay back for a little in his bed thinking about the smells of food . . . of the intoxicating breath of bakeries and dullness of buns. . . . He planned dinners, of enchanting aromatic foods . . . endless dinners, in which one could alternate flavour with flavour from sunset to dawn without satiety, while one breathed great draughts of the bouquet of old brandy.
if-there-is-a-god forgiving sin
O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin,
hats rabbits bunnies
Winston Churchill is always expecting rabbits to come out of an empty hat.
artist strive aesthetic
Aesthetic value is often the by-product of the artist striving to do something else.
simple literature kingdoms
Pray always for all the learned, the oblique, the delicate. Let them not be quite forgotten at the throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom.
morning memories war
My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time. We possess nothing certainly except the past.
artist years novelists
It may happen in the next hundred years that the English novelists of the present day will come to be valued as we now value the artists and craftsmen of the late eighteenth century.
daughter mother children
My unhealthy affection for my second daughter has waned. Now I despise all my seven children equally.
dog england englishmen
You never find an Englishman among the under-dogs except in England, of course.