He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich. – 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
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
Pray always for all the learned, the oblique, the delicate. Let them not be quite forgotten at the throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom. – Evelyn Waugh
I think to be oversensitive about cliches is like being oversensitive about table manners. – 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
Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction. – Evelyn Waugh
The truth is that Oxford is simply a very beautiful city in which it is convenient to segregate a certain number of the young of the nation while they are growing up. – Evelyn Waugh
Professional reviewers read so many bad books in the course of duty that they get an unhealthy craving for arresting phrases. – Evelyn Waugh
One forgets words as one forgets names. One’s vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die. – 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
My unhealthy affection for my second daughter has waned. Now I despise all my seven children equally. – Evelyn Waugh
All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I’d sooner go to my dentist any day. – Evelyn Waugh
There is a species of person called a ‘Modern Churchman’ who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not commit himself to any religious belief. – Evelyn Waugh
We class schools into four grades: leading school, first-rate school, good school and school. – Evelyn Waugh
