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

Evelyn Waugh

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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
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
I’m one of the blind alleys off the main road of procreation.
EVELYN WAUGH

Blind Myself Road
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
My children weary me. I can only see them as defective adults: feckless, destructive, frivolous, sensual, humorless.
EVELYN WAUGH

Children Destruction Family Father Myself See
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
Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.
EVELYN WAUGH

Boredom One Liner Punctuality Time Virtue
Almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.
EVELYN WAUGH

Art Crime Design Desire Expression
Where can we hide in fair weather, we orphans of the storm?
EVELYN WAUGH

Hide Orphan Storm
For in that city -New York; there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.
EVELYN WAUGH

Energy Mistake People Resident
I can’t bare you when you’re not amusing.
EVELYN WAUGH

Amusement Myself Personality Yourself
O God, make me good, but not yet.
EVELYN WAUGH

Character God Goodness One Liner
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
We possess nothing certainly except the past.
EVELYN WAUGH

Exception One Liner Past Possession
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
The great charm in argument is really finding one’s own opinions, not other people’s.
EVELYN WAUGH

Argument Greatness Opinion People
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
All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I’d sooner go to my dentist any day.
EVELYN WAUGH

Happiness Myself Sleep Togetherness
Your actions, and your action alone, determines your worth.
EVELYN WAUGH

Action Alone Determination Worth 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
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
You don’t remove the evil in a person by killing the person.
EVELYN WAUGH

Evil Kill Person Remove Yourself
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
The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant they are.
EVELYN WAUGH

Education Ignorance Modern Trouble Yourself
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
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
Enclosing every thin man, there’s a fat man demanding elbow-room.
EVELYN WAUGH

Demand Man Room

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

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

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