Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.
– Evelyn Waugh
Don't hold your parents up to contempt. After all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them.
– Evelyn Waugh
I put the words down and push them a bit.
– Evelyn Waugh
I think to be oversensitive about cliches is like being oversensitive about table manners.
– Evelyn Waugh
In the dying world I come from, quotation is a national vice.
– Evelyn Waugh
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.
– Evelyn Waugh
My unhealthy affection for my second daughter has waned. Now I despise all my seven children equally.
– Evelyn Waugh
Not everyone grows to be old, but everyone has been younger than he is now.
– Evelyn Waugh
Of children as of procreation - the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable.
– Evelyn Waugh
One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.
– Evelyn Waugh
Other nations use 'force'; we Britons alone use 'Might'.
– Evelyn Waugh
Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son.
– Evelyn Waugh
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.
– Evelyn Waugh
Professional reviewers read so many bad books in the course of duty that they get an unhealthy craving for arresting phrases.
– Evelyn Waugh
The truth is that Oxford is simply a very beautiful city in which it is convenient to segregate a certain number of the young of the nation while they are growing up.
– Evelyn Waugh
There is a species of person called a 'Modern Churchman' who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not commit himself to any religious belief.
– Evelyn Waugh
We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them.
– Evelyn Waugh
We class schools into four grades: leading school, first-rate school, good school and school.
– Evelyn Waugh
What is youth except a man or woman before it is ready or fit to be seen?
– Evelyn Waugh
When we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them.
– Evelyn Waugh
Your actions, and your action alone, determines your worth.
– Evelyn Waugh
What is youth except a man or a woman before it is ready or fit to be seen?
– Evelyn Waugh
He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich.