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O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin.

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 prefer all but the very worst travel books, to all but the very best novels.
EVELYN WAUGH

Best Book Novel Travel Worst
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
Not everyone grows to be old, but everyone has been younger than he is now.
EVELYN WAUGH

Growth Himself Old Young
Remember that, however patient your study, you will never in adult life learn any language perfectly; the best you can hope for is to be a bore.
EVELYN WAUGH

Adult Best Boredom Education Hope Language Life Patience Perfection Remember Study Yourself
Once you start changing a name, you see, there’s no reason ever to stop. One always hears one that sounds better.
EVELYN WAUGH

Better Change Name Reason See Sound Start Stop Yourself
Her heart was broken perhaps, but it was a small inexpensive organ of local manufacture. In a wider and grander way she felt things had been simplified.
EVELYN WAUGH

Feeling Heart Broken Herself Local Simplicity
He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich.
EVELYN WAUGH

Gift Himself Intuition Rich Wisdom
It is easy, retrospectively, to endow one’s youth with a false precocity or a false innocence; to tamper with the dates marking one’s stature on the edge of the door.
EVELYN WAUGH

Easy Innocence Oneself Youth
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
For in that city -New York; there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.
EVELYN WAUGH

Energy Mistake People Resident
To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.
EVELYN WAUGH

Human Love Oneself Relationship Root Wisdom
Almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.
EVELYN WAUGH

Art Crime Design Desire Expression
Mr. Wodehouse’s idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.
EVELYN WAUGH

Future Generation Happiness Himself Live World
O God, make me good, but not yet.
EVELYN WAUGH

Character God Goodness One Liner
Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you.
EVELYN WAUGH

Art Charm Death Existence Fear Greatness Kill Love Myself Touch Yourself
If you asked me now who I am, the only answer I could give with any certainty would be my name. For the rest: my loves, my hates, down even to my deepest desires, I can no longer say whether these emotions are my own, or stolen from those I once so desperately wished to be.
EVELYN WAUGH

Answer Desire Desperate Emotion Hate Identity Love Name Philosophy Yourself
Aesthetic value is often the by-product of the artist striving to do something else.
EVELYN WAUGH

Art Artist Design Strike Value
You don’t remove the evil in a person by killing the person.
EVELYN WAUGH

Evil Kill Person Remove Yourself
Words have basic inalienable meanings, departure from which is either conscious metaphor or inexcusable vulgarity.
EVELYN WAUGH

Meaning Vulgar Word
Conversation should be like juggling; up go the balls and plates, up and over, in and out, good solid objects that glitter in the footlights and fall with a bang if you miss them.
EVELYN WAUGH

Conversation Goodness Missing Yourself
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
Words should be an intense pleasure just as leather should be to a shoemaker.
EVELYN WAUGH

Happiness Intense Shoes Word
Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son.
EVELYN WAUGH

Father Happiness Relationship Son
After all, damn it, what does being in love mean if you can’t trust a person.
EVELYN WAUGH

Couple Love Person Relationship Trust Yourself
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

O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin.

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O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin.

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Popular Authors

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