‘In a democracy,’ said Mr Pinfold, with more weight than originality, ‘Men do not seek authority so that they may impose a policy. They seek a policy so that they may achieve authority’
Evelyn Waugh Quotes
It is a curious thing that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.
News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read. And it’s only news until he’s read it. After that it’s dead.
Of course, you haven’t got to decide, but think about it. I can’t advise you in my favor because it would be beastly for you, but think how nice it would be for me! (proposing to Laura Herbert, 1936)
I came to the conclusion many years ago that almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.
Civilization – and by this I do not mean talking cinemas and tinned food, nor even surgery and hygienic houses, but the whole moral and artistic organization of Europe – has not in itself the power of survival. It came into being through Christianity, and without it has no significance or power to command allegiance… […]
It is a typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant, and then remove it. (When told that Randolph Churchill had had a tumor removed, but it turned out to be benign)
Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.
Aesthetic value is often the by-product of the artist striving to do something else.
What a man enjoys about a woman’s clothes are his fantasies of how she would look without them.
