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Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh Quotes

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Famous Evelyn Waugh Quotes

“...but it was not until Sebastian idly turning the page of Clive Bell's Art, read: '“Does anyone feel the same kind of emotion for a butterfly or a flower that he feels for a cathedral or a picture?” Yes. I do,' that my eyes were opened.”

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Book:Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder
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“The langour of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth - all save this come and go with us through life...These things are a part of life itself; but languor - the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding, the sun standing still in the heavens and the earth throbbing to our own pulse - that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it.”

MindStillsSelfEarthDiesLostHeavenSunYouthDespairUniqueIllusionStandingAffectionTraditionalGenerousAttributesRelaxationPulseComes And GoesParts Of LifeZestStanding StillQuintessentialBrideshead Revisited
Author:Evelyn Waugh
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“Perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; vagabond-language scrawled on gate-posts and paving-stones along the weary road that others have tramped before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.”

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Author: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.”

MenHumansWholeAgeBitsHuman BeingsAliveModernProduceTinyBottlesPretendingOrgansPrimitiveSavagesLaboratoryGhastlyUp To DateBrideshead Revisited
Author: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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Book:Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder
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“Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman's day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days - such as that day - when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth. It was this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamour.”

MenStillsDoneCitiesClearAirStreetsCenturyYouthFlowerQuietSummerGloryLaughterSpokesBellsGreyMistSpringtimeOxfordResonanceHushSummer DaysInterveningNewmanChestnutsBrideshead RevisitedClamour
Author:Evelyn Waugh
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“The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant people are. With anyone over fifty you can be fairly confident what's been taught and what's been left out. But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into depths of confusion you didn't know existed.”

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Author:Evelyn Waugh
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“But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.”

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Book:Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder
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