70+ Evelyn Waugh Quotes | Minimalist Quotes

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

Human Love Oneself Relationship Root Wisdom
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
For in that city -New York; there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.
EVELYN WAUGH

Energy Mistake People Resident
What is youth except a man or a woman before it is ready or fit to be seen.
EVELYN WAUGH

Exception See Woman Youth
I prefer all but the very worst travel books, to all but the very best novels.
EVELYN WAUGH

Best Book Novel Travel Worst
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
To understand all is to forgive all.
EVELYN WAUGH

Deep Forgiveness One Liner Understand Wisdom
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
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 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
It is no longer possible to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis upon which it is based.
EVELYN WAUGH

Acceptance Civilization Possible Time
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
You don’t remove the evil in a person by killing the person.
EVELYN WAUGH

Evil Kill Person Remove Yourself
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
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
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
I’m quite deaf now; such a comfort.
EVELYN WAUGH

Comfortable Deaf Myself Quite
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
The great charm in argument is really finding one’s own opinions, not other people’s.
EVELYN WAUGH

Argument Greatness Opinion People
News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read.
EVELYN WAUGH

Care Media News Reading
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 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
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
Money is only useful when you get rid of it. It is like the odd card in ‘Old Maid’; the player who is finally left with it has lost.
EVELYN WAUGH

Lost Money Philosophy Player
There’s only one great evil in the world today. Despair.
EVELYN WAUGH

Evil Greatness Oneself World
Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son.
EVELYN WAUGH

Father Happiness Relationship Son
Words should be an intense pleasure just as leather should be to a shoemaker.
EVELYN WAUGH

Happiness Intense Shoes Word

Evelyn Waugh Quotes

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