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The only thing that it is advisable to know in any language is the numerals and even there, you can do a lot with the fingers.

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
Numerals
Advisable
Fingers
Language
Even
Thing

More quotes by Evelyn Waugh

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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.
Evelyn Waugh
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For in that city [New York] there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.
Evelyn Waugh
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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.
Evelyn Waugh
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I felt that I was leaving part of myself behind, and that wherever I went afterwards I should feel the lack of it, and search for it hopelessly, as ghosts are said to do, frequenting the spots where they buried material treasures without which they cannot pay their way to the nether world.
Evelyn Waugh
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Beerbohm was a genius of the purest kind. He stands at the summit of his art.
Evelyn Waugh
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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
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Money is only useful when you get rid of it. It is like the odd card in 'Old Maid' the player who is finally left with it has lost.
Evelyn Waugh
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The languor of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost!
Evelyn Waugh
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... the understatement, the self-ridicule, the delight in the foreignness of foreigners, the complete denial of any attempt to enlist the sympathies of his readers in the hardships he has capriciously invited.
Evelyn Waugh
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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
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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
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If politicians and scientists were lazier, how much happier we should all be
Evelyn Waugh
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Words should be an intense pleasure just as leather should be to a shoemaker.
Evelyn Waugh
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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
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From the earliest times the Welsh have been looked upon as an unclean people. It is thus that they have preserved their racial integrity. Their sons and daughters rarely mate with humankind except their own blood relations.
Evelyn Waugh
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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
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that is not the last word it is not even an apt word it is a dead word from ten years back.
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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Of children as of procreation -- the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable
Evelyn Waugh
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Professional reviewers read so many bad books in the course of duty that they get an unhealthy craving for arresting phrases.
Evelyn Waugh