Quotes from Evelyn Waugh

I heard someone say that this was a very exclusive war.

Here the girls danced together in the winter evenings to the music of the wireless and tender possessive friendships were contracted and repudiated;

Church again. My prayer is now only, 'Here I am again. Show me what to do; help me do it.

Open country was easily reached in those days.

Brideshead Revisited

He had no strength for any other war than his own solitary struggle to keep alive.

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

I put the words down and push them a bit.

When we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them.

The splendid thing about education is that everyone wants it. Like influenza, you can give it away without losing any of it yourself.

The worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without Him. Julia to Charles

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

I've always had two principles throughout all my life in motion-pictures: never do before the camera what you would not do at home and never do at home what you would not do before the camera.

How ungenerously in later life we disclaim the virtuous moods of our youth, living in retrospect long, summer days of unreflecting dissipation.

One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.

Have you at any time been detained in a mental home or similar institution? If so, give particulars.' 'I was at Scone College, Oxford, for two years,' said Paul.

It is no longer possible to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis upon which it is based.

My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time. We possess nothing certainly except the past.

I know I am awful. But how much more awful I should be without the Faith.

You'll find you spend half your second year shaking off the undesirable friends you made in your first...

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.

Soon someone would say the fatal words, "Well, I think it's time for me to go to bed.

I think it's one of the kindest things you can do to the very wicked, to give them time to repent.

He did not fail in love, but he lost the joy of it [...]