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If a thing’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing well.

Evelyn Waugh

Of the many smells of Athens two seem to me the most characteristic – that of garlic, bold and deadly like acetylene gas. and that of dust, soft and warm and caressing like tweed.
EVELYN WAUGH

Character Food Soft Warm
Almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.
EVELYN WAUGH

Art Crime Design Desire Expression
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
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
The splendid thing about education is that everyone wants it. Like influenza, you can give it away without losing any of it yourself.
EVELYN WAUGH

Education Lose Yourself
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
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
There is something incomparably thrilling in first opening a brand new book.
EVELYN WAUGH

Books Feeling Open Thrill
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
The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish.
EVELYN WAUGH

Appearance Enough Heaven Human Invention Mindset
Where can we hide in fair weather, we orphans of the storm?
EVELYN WAUGH

Hide Orphan Storm
Here I am,’ I thought, ‘back from the jungle, back from the ruins. Here, where wealth is no longer gorgeous and power has no dignity.
EVELYN WAUGH

Dignity Forest Myself Power Ruin Thinking
Words have basic inalienable meanings, departure from which is either conscious metaphor or inexcusable vulgarity.
EVELYN WAUGH

Meaning Vulgar Word
News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read.
EVELYN WAUGH

Care Media News Reading
Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.
EVELYN WAUGH

Boredom One Liner Punctuality Time Virtue
Your actions, and your action alone, determines your worth.
EVELYN WAUGH

Action Alone Determination Worth 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
The only thing that it is advisable to know in any language is the numerals; and even there, you can do a lot with the fingers.
EVELYN WAUGH

Advice Fingers Language Yourself
Anyone could write a novel given six weeks, pen paper, and no telephone or wife.
EVELYN WAUGH

Books Novel Phone Wife Writing
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
O God, make me good, but not yet.
EVELYN WAUGH

Character God Goodness One Liner
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
What is youth except a man or a woman before it is ready or fit to be seen.
EVELYN WAUGH

Exception See Woman Youth
Enclosing every thin man, there’s a fat man demanding elbow-room.
EVELYN WAUGH

Demand Man Room
We possess nothing certainly except the past.
EVELYN WAUGH

Exception One Liner Past Possession
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
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.
EVELYN WAUGH

Active Age Comfortable Company Philosophy Young

If a thing’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing well.

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If a thing’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing well.

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