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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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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
Necessary
Added
Fugitive
Understood
Properly
Functional
Style
Individuality
Decoration
Quality
Qualities
Permanence
Art
Letters
Nearest
Preservative
Three
Structure
Seductive
Ensures
Form
Essence
Combine
Lucidity
Work
Elements
Elegance
Approximation

More quotes by Evelyn Waugh

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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?
Evelyn Waugh
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I never can understand how two men can write a book together to me that's like three people getting together to have a baby.
Evelyn Waugh
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We class schools into four grades: leading school, first-rate school, good school and school.
Evelyn Waugh
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That's the public-school system all over. They may kick you out, but they never let you down.
Evelyn Waugh
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My children weary me. I can only see them as defective adults: feckless, destructive, frivolous, sensual, humorless.
Evelyn Waugh
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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
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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
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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.
Evelyn Waugh
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I read the newspapers with lively interest. It is seldom that they are absolutely, point-blank wrong. That is the popular belief, but those who are in the know can usually discern an embryo of truth, a little grit of fact, like the core of a pearl, round which have been deposited the delicate layers of ornament.
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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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
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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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The better sort of Ishmaelites have been Christian for many centuries and will not publicly eat human flesh uncooked in Lent, without special and costly dispensation from their bishop.
Evelyn Waugh
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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
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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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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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You can't ever tell what's going to hurt people.
Evelyn Waugh
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I [had] added another small piece to the pages of the atlas that were real to me.
Evelyn Waugh
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He wasn't a complete human being at all. He was a tiny bit of one, unnaturally developed something in a bottle, an organ kept alive in a laboratory. I thought he was a sort of primitive savage, but he was something absolutely modern and up-to-date that only this ghastly age could produce. A tiny bit of a man pretending to be whole.
Evelyn Waugh
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We are American at puberty. We die French.
Evelyn Waugh