All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist any day.
Evelyn Waugh

Almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.
Evelyn Waugh

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.
Evelyn Waugh

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

He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich.
Evelyn Waugh

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

I put the words down and push them a bit.
Evelyn Waugh

I think to be oversensitive about cliches is like being oversensitive about table manners.
Evelyn Waugh

If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside.
Evelyn Waugh

In the dying world I come from, quotation is a national vice.
Evelyn Waugh


Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.
Evelyn Waugh

It is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.
Evelyn Waugh

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

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

My unhealthy affection for my second daughter has waned. Now I despise all my seven children equally.
Evelyn Waugh

News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead.
Evelyn Waugh

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

One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.
Evelyn Waugh

Other nations use 'force'; we Britons alone use 'Might'.
Evelyn Waugh

Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son.
Evelyn Waugh