Evelyn Waugh - Vile Bodies (1930)

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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."

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

Evelyn Waugh
Mrs. Ape's famous hymn, There ain't no flies on the Lamb of God.

Evelyn Waugh
Soon someone would say the fatal words, "Well, I think it's time for me to go to bed."

Evelyn Waugh
I know very few young people, but it seems to me that they are all possessed with an almost fatal hunger for permanence.

Evelyn Waugh
There's only one great evil in the world today. Despair.

Evelyn Waugh
He lay back for a little in his bed thinking about the smells of food... of the intoxicating breath of bakeries and dullness of buns.... He planned dinners, of enchanting aromatic foods... endless dinners, in which one could alternate flavour with flavour from sunset to dawn without satiety, while one breathed great draughts of the bouquet of old brandy.

Evelyn Waugh
"What war?" said the Prime Minister sharply. "No one has said anything to me about a war. I really think I should have been told. I'll be damned," he said defiantly, "if they shall have a war without consulting me. What's a cabinet for, if there's not more mutual confidence than that? What do they want a war for, anyway?"

Evelyn Waugh
She had heard someone say something about an Independent Labour Party, and was furious that she had not been asked.

Evelyn Waugh
After all, damn it, what does being in love mean if you can't trust a person.

Evelyn Waugh