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Not everyone grows to be old, but everyone has been younger than he is now.

Evelyn Waugh

Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there’s no room for the present at all.
EVELYN WAUGH

Feeling Future Myself Past Present Room Side
Enclosing every thin man, there’s a fat man demanding elbow-room.
EVELYN WAUGH

Demand Man Room
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
I prefer all but the very worst travel books, to all but the very best novels.
EVELYN WAUGH

Best Book Novel Travel Worst
Every Englishman abroad, until it is proved to the contrary, likes to consider himself a traveller and not a tourist.
EVELYN WAUGH

Himself Man Travel
Words have basic inalienable meanings, departure from which is either conscious metaphor or inexcusable vulgarity.
EVELYN WAUGH

Meaning Vulgar Word
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
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
To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.
EVELYN WAUGH

Human Love Oneself Relationship Root Wisdom
Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.
EVELYN WAUGH

Boredom One Liner Punctuality Time Virtue
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
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
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
Where can we hide in fair weather, we orphans of the storm?
EVELYN WAUGH

Hide Orphan Storm
If a thing’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing well.
EVELYN WAUGH

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

Division People Sex Weird
O God, make me good, but not yet.
EVELYN WAUGH

Character God Goodness One Liner
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
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
If politicians and scientists were lazier, how much happier we should all be.
EVELYN WAUGH

Happiness Politics Science
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 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
When we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them.
EVELYN WAUGH

Argument Limitation Ourselves

Not everyone grows to be old, but everyone has been younger than he is now.

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Not everyone grows to be old, but everyone has been younger than he is now.

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