Quotes from Evelyn Waugh

'I don't believe you've changed at all, Charles.' 'No, I'm afraid not.' 'D'you want to change?' 'It's the only evidence of life.'

Now we shall both be alone, and I shall have no way of making you understand.' 'I don't want to make it easier for you,' I said; 'I hope your heart may break; but I do understand.

Change is the only evidence of life.

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

Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son.

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich.

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

We possess nothing certainly except the past

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.

Wine is a bride who brings a great dowry to the man who woos her persistently and gracefully.

Other nations use 'force'; we Britons alone use 'Might'.

If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside.

What is youth except a man or a woman before it is ready or fit to be seen.

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.

Professional reviewers read so many bad books in the course of duty that they get an unhealthy craving for arresting phrases.

My unhealthy affection for my second daughter has waned. Now I despise all my seven children equally.

Saints are simply men & women who have fulfilled their natural obligation which is to approach God.

Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.

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

Port is not for the very young, the vain and the active. It is the comfort of age and the companion of the scholar and the philosopher

If it could only be like this always - always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe and Aloysius in a good temper.

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.

I never can understand how two men can write a book together; to me that's like three people getting together to have a baby.