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We are American at puberty. We die French.

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
Puberty
French
Dies
American

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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There are no poetic ideas only poetic utterances.
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.
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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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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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If one's object is ascetic, it is far better to stay in London or Paris or New York there is practically no extreme of heat or cold, physical risk, loneliness, hunger or thirst that cannot, with a little ingenuity, be conveniently achieved in the centres of civilization.
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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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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
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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've always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. ... Or it may be a private bargain between me and God, that if I give up this one thing I want so much, however bad I am, He won't quite despair of me in the end.
Evelyn Waugh
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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
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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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You never find an Englishman among the under-dogs except in England, of course.
Evelyn Waugh
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An artist must be a reactionary
Evelyn Waugh
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There is something incomparably thrilling in first opening a brand new book.
Evelyn Waugh