Quotes from Evelyn Waugh

Well, it'll be a long war. There'll be fun for us all in the end.

But as I drove away and turned back in the car to take what promised to be my last view of the house, I felt that I was leaving part of myself behind, and that wherever I went afterwards I should feel the lack of it

Most English gentlemen at this time believed that they had a particular aptitude for endearing themselves to the lower classes.

Premature examination of his files might ruin his private, undefined Plan. Somewhere in the ultimate curlicues of his mind, there was a Plan. Given time, given enough confidential material, he would succeed in knitting the entire quarrelsome world into a single net of conspiracy in which there were no antagonists, merely millions of men working, unknown to one another, for the same end; and there would be no more war.

Ch 3: How ungenerously in later life we disclaim the virtuous moods of our youth, living in retrospect long summer days of unreflecting dissipation. There is no candor in the story of early manhood which leaves out of account the homesickness for nursery morality. The regrets and resolutions of amendments, the black hours which, like zero on the roulette table, turn up with roughly calculable regularity.

I don't thinks she cares for anyone much. I love her. She's so like me. Do you? Is she? In looks and the way she talks. I wouldn't love anyone with a character like mine.

Blücher, pushing himself forward with typical Prussian effrontery to share the glory which the other had won)

Een prima plek om een schat te begraven, zei Sebastian. Ik zou op elke plek waar ik gelukkig ben geweest iets kostbaars willen begraven, en dan kom ik, als ik oud en lelijk en ellendig was geworden, terugkomen en het opgraven en me alles weer herinneren.

I personally have no doubt,' he said, 'and I am confirmed in my opinion by many reports, that great encouragement is given to our allies and sympathizers throughout the world by the survival' (laughter) 'in this country of what is almost unique in present conditions, a periodical entirely independent of official direction.

These memories, which are my life -- for we possess nothing certainly except the past -- were always with me.

We look back already to the time of the persecution as though it were the heroic age, but have you ever thought how awfully few martyrs there were, compared with how many there ought to have been?

The Church isn't a cult for a few heroes. It is the whole of fallen mankind redeemed.

They were so busy in those weeks with their own homebuilding, repairing, rearranging, improvising, that the great storm that was shaking the world passed overhead unnoticed until the crash of a bough set all the hidden roots again vibrating.

The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off. It was the Modern Age in arms. Whatever the outcome there was a place for him in that battle." This was the belief of Guy Crouchback in 1939 when he heard the news of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty. What follows is the story of his attempt to find his "place in that battle.

a handsome Frenchwoman abounding in commercial good nature.

I'm bound to say your Cardinal Hinsley did a wonderful job of work on the wireless. You could see he was an Englishman first and a Christian second; that is more than you can say of one or two of our bishops.

To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom

The temptation for Guy, which he resisted as best he could, was to brood on his own bereavement and deplore the countless occasions of his life when he had failed his father. That was not what he was here for. There would be ample time in the years to come for these selfish considerations.

we possess nothing certainly except the past

Did you have a little talk with mummy?' 'Yes.' 'Have you gone over to her side?' The day before I would have said: 'There aren't two sides,'; that day I said, 'No, I'm with you, Sebastian contra mundum.

I must visualize the scene, Apthorpe. When we are old men, memories of things like this will be our chief comfort.

England had declared war to defend the independence of Poland. Now that country had quite disappeared and the two strongest states in the world guaranteed her extinction.

There was one insect which buzzed in a particular manner. Listen, said Mr Bain one day, that is most interesting. It is what we call the 'six o'clock beetle', because he always makes that noise at exactly six o'clock. But it is now quarter past four. Yes, that is what is so interesting. At one time and another in the country I heard the six o'clock beetle at every hour of the day and night.

How good it is to sit in the shade and talk of love