Evelyn Waugh

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

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

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.

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

"The Beast stands for strong mutually antagonistic governments everywhere," he said. "Self-sufficiency at home, self-assertion abroad."

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.

A copy of Dante's Purgatorio excited his especial disgust."French, eh?" he said. "I guessed as much, and pretty dirty too, I shouldn't wonder. Now just you wait while I look up these here books"—how he said it!—"in my list. Particularly against books the Home Secretary is. If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside."

"Was anyone hurt?"

"No one I am thankful to say," said Mrs. Beaver, "except two housemaids who lost their heads and jumped through a glass roof into the paved court."

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

Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay intimacy of the slums who find prison so soul-destroying.

I came to the conclusion many years ago that almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.

I expect you'll be becoming a schoolmaster, sir. That's what most of the gentlemen does, sir, that gets sent down for indecent behaviour.