73 quotes
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.
Put Out More Flags (1942)
To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.
Brideshead Revisited (1945)
It doesn't matter what people call you unless they call you pigeon pie and eat you up.
Brideshead Revisited (1945)
O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin.
Brideshead Revisited (1945)
Enclosing every thin man, there's a fat man demanding elbow-room.
Officers and Gentlemen (1955)
Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.
A Little Learning (1964)
Shady young men in Charvet shirts sit round the bar repairing with powder-puff and lipstick the ravages of grenadine and crème de cacao.
Decline and Fall (1928)
My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time.
Brideshead Revisited (1945)
Aesthetic value is often the by-product of the artist striving to do something else.
Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (1976)
One can write, think and pray exclusively of others; dreams are all egocentric.
You never find an Englishman among the under-dogs—except in England, of course.
The Loved One (1948)
Sebastian entered — dove-grey flannel, white crepe-de-Chine shirt, a Charvet tie, my tie as it happened, a pattern of postage stamps.
Brideshead Revisited (1945)
No honest man has been able to save any money in the last twenty years.
'So like one's first parties,' said Miss Runcible, 'being sick with other people singing.'
Vile Bodies (1930)
We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them -- a diminishing number in my case.
Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (1976)
Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole.
Scoop (1938)
I'm one of the blind alleys off the main road of procreation.
Decline and Fall (1928)
I put the words down and push them a bit.
Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.
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.