Evelyn Waugh - Decline and Fall (1928)

31 Sourced Quotes

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'I couldn't understand why God had made the world at all...' I asked my bishop; he didn't know. He said that he didn't think the point arose as far as my practical duties as a parish priest were concerned..'

Evelyn Waugh
The Welsh are the only nation in the world that has produced no graphic or plastic art, no architecture, no drama. They just sing. Sing and blow down wind instruments of plated silver.

Evelyn Waugh
There is something incomparably thrilling in first opening a brand new book.

Evelyn Waugh
Never get mixed up in a Welsh wrangle. It doesn't end in blows like an Irish one, but goes on forever.

Evelyn Waugh
I have been in the scholastic profession long enough to know that nobody enters it unless he has some very good reason that he is anxious to conceal.

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

Evelyn Waugh
Why, only last term we sent a man who had never been in a laboratory in his life as a senior Science Master to one of our leading public schools. He came [to our agency] wanting to do private coaching in music. He's doing very well, I believe.

Evelyn Waugh
There will be a prize of half a crown for the longest essay, irrespective of any possible merit.

Evelyn Waugh
Any one 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, Paul learned, who find prison so soul-destroying.

Evelyn Waugh
And the only interest about him arises from the unusual series of events of which his shadow was witness.

Evelyn Waugh
Any who have heard that sound will shrink at the recollection of it; it is the sound of English county families baying for broken glass.

Evelyn Waugh
What is this impulse of two people to build their beastly home? It's you & me, unborn, asserting our presence. All we are is a manifestation of the impulse to family life, and if by chance we have escaped the itch ourselves, Nature forces it upon us another way.

Evelyn Waugh
"We class schools, you see, into four grades: Leading School, First-rate School, Good School, and School. Frankly," said Mr Levy, "School is pretty bad..."

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

Evelyn Waugh
I have observed in women of her type a tendency to regard all athletics as inferior forms of foxhunting.

Evelyn Waugh
Please bear in mind throughout that IT IS MEANT TO BE FUNNY.

Evelyn Waugh
I'm one of the blind alleys off the main road of procreation.

Evelyn Waugh
Augustus Fagan, Esquire, Ph. D., Llanabba Castle, N. Wales, requires immediately junior assistant to teach Classics and English to University Standard with subsidiary Mathematics, German and French. Experience essential; first-class games essential...

Evelyn Waugh
'But what am I to teach them?' said Paul in sudden panic.
'Oh, I shouldn't try to teach them anything, not just yet, anyway. Just keep them quiet.'

Evelyn Waugh
'I often think,' he continued, 'that we can trace almost all the disasters of English history to the influence of Wales!'

Evelyn Waugh
It's the seed of life we carry about with us like our skeletons, each one of us unconsciously pregnant with desirable villa residences. There's no escape. As individuals we simply do not exist. We are just potential home builders, beavers, and ants. How do we come into being? What is birth?

Evelyn Waugh
Have you at any time been detained in a mental home or similar institution? If so, give particulars.' 'I was at Scone College, Oxford, for two years,' said Paul.

Evelyn Waugh
I don't believe that people would ever fall in love or want to be married if they hadn't been told about it. It's like abroad: no one would want to go there if they hadn't been told it existed.

Evelyn Waugh
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.

Evelyn Waugh
They should have told me that at the end of that gay journey and flower-strewn path were the hideous lights of home and the voices of children.

Evelyn Waugh
Mr. Sniggs, the Junior Dean, and Mr. Postlethwaite, the Domestic Bursar, sat alone in Mr. Sniggs's room overlooking the garden quad at Scone College.

Evelyn Waugh
That's the public-school system all over. They may kick you out, but they never let you down.

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

Evelyn Waugh