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Words have basic inalienable meanings, departure from which is either conscious metaphor or inexcusable vulgarity.

Evelyn Waugh

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Evelyn Waugh
Age: 62 †
Born: 1903
Born: October 28
Died: 1966
Died: April 10
Autobiographer
Diarist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
War Correspondent
Writer
Evelyn Arthur St John Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh
Meanings
Departure
Metaphor
Basic
Conscious
Either
Inexcusable
Words
Inalienable
Writing
Vulgarity

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If politicians and scientists were lazier, how much happier we should all be
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An artist must be a reactionary
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I have no technical psychological interest it is drama, speech,and events that interest me.
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I think there's almost nothing I can't excuse except perhaps worshiping graven images. That seems to be idiotic.
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My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time. We possess nothing certainly except the past.
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When I reached C Company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning.
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There is something incomparably thrilling in first opening a brand new book.
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Evelyn Waugh: How do you get your main pleasure in life, Sir William? Sir William Beveridge: I get mine trying to leave the world a better place than I found it. Waugh: I get mine spreading alarm and despondency and I get more satisfaction than you do.
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Properly understood, style is not a seductive decoration added to a functional structure it is of the essence of a work of art. The necessary elements of style are lucidity, elegance, and individuality these three qualities combine to form a preservative which ensures the nearest approximation to permanence in the fugitive art of letters.
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Where can we hide in fair weather, we orphans of the storm?
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To understand all is to forgive all.
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Medical science has oppressed us with a new huge burden of longevity. It is in that last undesired decade, when passion is cold, appetites feeble, curiosity dulled and experience has begotten cynicism, that accidia lies in wait as the final temptation to destruction.
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It is typical of Oxford, I said, to start the new year in autumn.
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News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read.
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Beer commercials are so patriotic: Made the American Way. What does that have to do with America? Is that what America stands for? Feeling sluggish and urinating frequently?
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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
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One has to regard a man as a Master who can produce on average three uniquely brilliant and entirely original similes to every page.
Evelyn Waugh
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The anguished suspense of watching the lips you hunger for, framing the words, the death sentence, of sheer triteness!
Evelyn Waugh
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You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.
Evelyn Waugh
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Self-sufficiency at home, self-assertion abroad.
Evelyn Waugh