Quote

Remember that, however patient your study, you will never in adult life learn any language perfectly the best you can hope for is to be a bore.

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
Life
However
Study
Hope
Bore
Learn
Bores
Language
Adult
Remember
Perfectly
Best
Patient
Never
Adults

More quotes by Evelyn Waugh

Image
An artist must be a reactionary
Evelyn Waugh
Image
She told me later that she had made a kind of note of me in her mind, as, scanning the shelf for a particular book, one will sometimes have one's attention caught by another, take it down, glance at the title page and saying I must read that, too, when I've the time, replace it and continue the search.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
I've always had two principles throughout all my life in motion-pictures: never do before the camera what you would not do at home and never do at home what you would not do before the camera.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
Conversation should be like juggling up go the balls and plates, up and over, in and out, good solid objects that glitter in the footlights and fall with a bang if you miss them.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
Now we shall both be alone, and I shall have no way of making you understand.' 'I don't want to make it easier for you,' I said 'I hope your heart may break but I do understand.
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
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
Image
Saints are simply men & women who have fulfilled their natural obligation which is to approach God.
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
Don't hold your parents up to contempt. After all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
Her heart was broken perhaps, but it was a small inexpensive organ of local manufacture. In a wider and grander way she felt things had been simplified.
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
Image
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
Image
Of children as of procreation -- the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable
Evelyn Waugh
Image
that is not the last word it is not even an apt word it is a dead word from ten years back.
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
We class schools into four grades: leading school, first-rate school, good school and school.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
That's the public-school system all over. They may kick you out, but they never let you down.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish.
Evelyn Waugh
Image
That was the change in her from ten years ago that, indeed, was her reward, this haunting, magical sadness which spoke straight to the heart and struck silence it was the completion of her beauty.
Evelyn Waugh