Quotes by Evelyn Waugh

“What a man enjoys about a womans clothes are his fantasies of how she would look without them”

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

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

“I havent been to sleep for over a year. Thats why I go to bed early. One needs more rest if one doesnt sleep.”

“To know and love another human being is the root of all wisdom”

“Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.”

“One forgets words as one forgets names. Ones vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.”

“Dont hold your parents up to contempt. After all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them.”

“Not everyone grows to be old, but everyone has been younger than he is now.”

“Punctuality is the art of guessing how late the other fellow is going to be”

“Punctuality is a virtue, if you dont mind being lonely”

After all, damn it, what does being in love mean if you cant trust a person.

The worse I am, the more I need God. I cant shut myself out from His mercy. That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without Him.

Ive always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I cant shut myself out from His mercy. ... Or it may be a private bargain between me and God, that if I give up this one thing I want so much, however bad I am, He wont quite despair of me in the end.

No one could really hate a saint, could they? They cant really hate God either. When they want to Hate Him and His saints they have to find something like themselves and pretends its God and hate that.

Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a little thing, not a passing nod of recognition, and a phrase came back to me from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom.

Success in this world depends on knowing exactly how little effort each job is worth...distribution of energy...

As my intimacy with his family grew, I became part of the world which he sought to escape; I became one of the bonds which held him.

Rex, in his early forties, had grown heavy and ruddy; he had lost his Canadian accent and acquired instead the hoarse, loud tone that was common to all his friends, as though their voices were perpetually strained to make themselves heard above a crowd, as though, with youth forsaking them, there was no time to wait the opportunity to speak, no time to listen, no time to reply; time for a laugh — a throaty mirthless laugh, the base currency of goodwill.

I am sorry to disturb you, said James politely, but these people wished to shoot us.