Evelyn Waugh

“Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.”

“It is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.”

“An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.”

“I haven't been to sleep for over a year. That's why I go to bed early. One needs more rest if one doesn't sleep.”

“The great charm in argument is really finding out, not defending what you know.”

“Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.”

“Change is the only evidence of life.”

“When we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them.”

“Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.”

“If you asked me now who I am, the only answer I could give with any certainty would be my name.”

“The human mind is a dark forest, and no one that I have ever known has ever been able to prove that they are not mad.”

“I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then, when I'm old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.”

“Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.”

“To know and love another person is the root of all wisdom.”

“My children weary me. I can only see them as defective adults: feckless, destructive, frivolous, sensual, humorless.”

“Aesthetic value is often the byproduct of arbitrary decisions.”

“Your actions are your own. Your consequences are theirs.”