Evelyn Waugh

Almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.

I expect you’ll be becoming a schoolmaster, sir. That’s what most of the gentlemen does, sir, that gets sent down for indecent behavior.

Those huge novels from North America are not the product of diligence; hard labour would refine and clarify them.

Words should be an intense pleasure just as leather should be to a shoemaker.

If one’s object is ascetic, it is far better to stay in London or Paris or New York; there is practically no extreme of heat or cold, physical risk, loneliness, hunger or thirst that cannot, with a little ingenuity, be conveniently achieved in the centres of civilization.

Medical science has oppressed us with a new huge burden of longevity. It is in that last undesired decade, when passion is cold, appetites feeble, curiosity dulled and experience has begotten cynicism, that accidia lies in wait as the final temptation to destruction.

Money is only useful when you get rid of it. It is like the odd card in “Old Maid”; the player who is finally left with it has lost.

The only thing that it is advisable to know in any language is the numerals; and even there, you can do a lot with the fingers.

Remember that, however patient your study, you will never in adult life learn any language perfectly; the best you can hope for is to be a bore.

There is practically no sense that is not violated every time we return from the country or the sea to Paris or London or New York.

One forgets words as one forgets names. One’s vocabulary needs constant fertilising or it will die.

Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.

Suffering is none the less acute and much more lasting when it is put into words.

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

I do not believe the expenditure of $2.50 for a book entitles the purchaser to the personal friendship of the author.

Children are never too tender to be whipped. Like tough beefsteaks, the more you beat them, the more tender they become. Edgar Allan Poe #0754Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.

You never find an Englishman among the under-dogs - except in England, of course.

We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for our ability to amuse them.

The great charm in argument is really finding one’s own opinions, not other people’s .

DON’T HOLD YOUR PARENTS UP TO CONTEMPT. AFTER ALL… IT IS JUST POSSIBLE THAT YOU MAY TAKE AFTER THEM.

WHAT IS YOUTH EXCEPT A MAN OR A WOMAN BEFORE IT IS READY OR FIT TO BE SEEN?

A typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it.

‘Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole’ … ‘Yes,’ said the Managing Editor. ‘That must be good style.’

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.

Any one who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay intimacy of the slums, Paul learned, who find prison so soul-destroying.

Up to a point, Lord Copper.

I am not I: thou art not he or she: they are not they.

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

Revision is just as important as any other part of writing and must be done con amore .