70+ Evelyn Waugh Quotes | Minimalist Quotes

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
I haven’t been to sleep for over a year. That’s why I go to bed early. One needs more rest if one doesn’t sleep.
EVELYN WAUGH

Bed Myself Need Rest Sleep Work
When we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them.
EVELYN WAUGH

Argument Limitation Ourselves
We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them…
EVELYN WAUGH

Ability Cherish Friendship Ourselves
I can’t bare you when you’re not amusing.
EVELYN WAUGH

Amusement Myself Personality Yourself
Not everyone grows to be old, but everyone has been younger than he is now.
EVELYN WAUGH

Growth Himself Old Young
All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I’d sooner go to my dentist any day.
EVELYN WAUGH

Happiness Myself Sleep Togetherness
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
O God, make me good, but not yet.
EVELYN WAUGH

Character God Goodness One Liner
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
The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant they are.
EVELYN WAUGH

Education Ignorance Modern Trouble 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
We possess nothing certainly except the past.
EVELYN WAUGH

Exception One Liner Past Possession
I put the words down and push them a bit.
EVELYN WAUGH

Myself Voice Word
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
If politicians and scientists were lazier, how much happier we should all be.
EVELYN WAUGH

Happiness Politics Science
Aesthetic value is often the by-product of the artist striving to do something else.
EVELYN WAUGH

Art Artist Design Strike Value
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
Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.
EVELYN WAUGH

Character Let Go Mischief Need Yourself
If a thing’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing well.
EVELYN WAUGH

Work Worth
Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.
EVELYN WAUGH

Boredom One Liner Punctuality Time Virtue
O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin.
EVELYN WAUGH

Forgiveness God Philosophy Religious Sin
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
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
There is something incomparably thrilling in first opening a brand new book.
EVELYN WAUGH

Books Feeling Open Thrill
Words have basic inalienable meanings, departure from which is either conscious metaphor or inexcusable vulgarity.
EVELYN WAUGH

Meaning Vulgar Word
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

Evelyn Waugh Quotes

Famous English writers