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Enclosing every thin man, there’s a fat man demanding elbow-room.

Evelyn Waugh

I regard writing not as an investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed.
EVELYN WAUGH

Character Exercise Language Myself Obsession Regard Writing
I put the words down and push them a bit.
EVELYN WAUGH

Myself Voice Word
I think it’s one of the kindest things you can do to the very wicked, to give them time to repent.
EVELYN WAUGH

Kind Myself Thinking Time Wickedness
Its a rather pleasant change when all your life you’ve had people looking after you, to have someone to look after yourself. Only of course it has to be someone pretty hopeless to need looking after by me.
EVELYN WAUGH

Change Happiness Hope Life Myself People
A typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it.
EVELYN WAUGH

Modern Remove Science
I did not know it was possible to be so miserable and live but I am told that this is a common experience.
EVELYN WAUGH

Common Experience Live Misery Myself Possible
You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.
EVELYN WAUGH

Hard Human Ideas Myself Power Religious
An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.
EVELYN WAUGH

Age Artist Flop Reaction Stand
One forgets words as one forgets names. One’s vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.
EVELYN WAUGH

Death Forget Name Oneself Vocabulary Word
News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read.
EVELYN WAUGH

Care Media News Reading
I prefer all but the very worst travel books, to all but the very best novels.
EVELYN WAUGH

Best Book Novel Travel Worst
Enclosing every thin man, there’s a fat man demanding elbow-room.
EVELYN WAUGH

Demand Man Room
To understand all is to forgive all.
EVELYN WAUGH

Deep Forgiveness One Liner Understand Wisdom
A work of art is not a matter of thinking beautiful thoughts or experiencing tender emotions , but of intelligence, skill, taste, proportion, knowledge, discipline and industry; especially discipline.
EVELYN WAUGH

Art Beautiful Discipline Experience Thinking Work
I think there’s almost nothing I can’t excuse except perhaps worshiping graven images. That seems to be idiotic.
EVELYN WAUGH

Excuse Image Myself Stupidity Thinking Worship
I don’t believe that people would ever fall in love or want to be married if they hadn’t been told about it. It’s like abroad: no one would want to go there if they hadn’t been told it existed.
EVELYN WAUGH

Believe Existence Fall Love Marriage Myself People
Almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.
EVELYN WAUGH

Art Crime Design Desire Expression
They are a very decent generous lot of people out here and they don’t expect you to listen. It’s the secret of social ease in this country. They talk entirely for their own pleasure. Nothing they say is designed to be heard.
EVELYN WAUGH

Country Design Expectation Generosity Happiness Listening People Secret Talk
There’s only one great evil in the world today. Despair.
EVELYN WAUGH

Evil Greatness Oneself World
Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.
EVELYN WAUGH

Division People Sex Weird
I read the newspapers with lively interest. It is seldom that they are absolutely, point-blank wrong. That is the popular belief, but those who are in the know can usually discern an embryo of truth, a little grit of fact, like the core of a pearl, round which have been deposited the delicate layers of ornament.
EVELYN WAUGH

Live Myself Popular Reading Truth Wrong
We possess nothing certainly except the past.
EVELYN WAUGH

Exception One Liner Past Possession
Aesthetic value is often the by-product of the artist striving to do something else.
EVELYN WAUGH

Art Artist Design Strike Value
It is a curious thing. That every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.
EVELYN WAUGH

Civilization Curiosity Paradise Promise Taste
If a thing’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing well.
EVELYN WAUGH

Work Worth
I should like to bury something precious in every place where I’ve been happy and then, when I’m old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.
EVELYN WAUGH

Bury Happiness Misery Myself Old Place Precious Remember Ugly
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

Hold Parents Possible Son Yourself

Enclosing every thin man, there’s a fat man demanding elbow-room.

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Enclosing every thin man, there’s a fat man demanding elbow-room.

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