Quote

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor [group think] of the age and not go flopping along. By doing this he helps us to question and reassess our past, present and future situations, our assumptions and our options.

Evelyn Waugh

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Options
Past
Present
Assumption
Reassess
Must
Stand
Situations
Flopping
Think
Situation
Helps
Tenor
Thinking
Age
Group
Tenors
Future
Reactionary
Artist
Along
Reactionaries
Helping
Groups
Assumptions
Art
Question

More quotes by Evelyn Waugh

Image
It is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
I prefer all but the very worst travel books, to all but the very best novels.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
The anguished suspense of watching the lips you hunger for, framing the words, the death sentence, of sheer triteness!
Evelyn Waugh
Image
I have no technical psychological interest it is drama, speech,and events that interest me.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
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
Image
It is no longer possible to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis upon which it is based.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
An artist must be a reactionary
Evelyn Waugh
Image
Beerbohm was a genius of the purest kind. He stands at the summit of his art.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
Here I am,' I thought, 'back from the jungle, back from the ruins. Here, where wealth is no longer gorgeous and power has no dignity.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time. We possess nothing certainly except the past.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
MGM bores me when I see them, but I don't see them much. They have been a help in getting me introductions to morticians, who are the only people worth knowing.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
I am suing Lord Beaverbrook for libel and hope for some lovely tax-free money in damages. He has very conveniently told some lies about me.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
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.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
Of the many smells of Athens two seem to me the most characteristic - that of garlic, bold and deadly like acetylene gas. and that of dust, soft and warm and caressing like tweed.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
Its theme-- the operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters-- was perhaps presumptuously large, but I make no apology for it.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
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
Image
It doesn't matter what people call you unless they call you pigeon pie and eat you up.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
I have lived carefully, sheltered myself from the cold winds, eaten moderately of what was in season, drunk fine claret, slept in my own sheets I shall live long.
Evelyn Waugh