Skip to content

None of the great movements of the nineteenth century is more typical of its age than that for the freeing of the slaves. It depended on all those fallacies that are being abandoned today: the idea of a perfectible evolutionary man, of a responsible democratic voter, of the beneficial effect of mechanization, and, above all, on sentimental belief in the basic sweetness of human nature.

— Evelyn Waugh

Another quote →

More quotes by Evelyn Waugh

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)

All Evelyn Waugh quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Evelyn Waugh (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.