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d89ea9e
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Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.
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Evelyn Waugh |
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d90cb0f
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It doesn't matter what people call you unless they call you pigeon pie and eat you up.
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Evelyn Waugh |
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5bb5a87
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After all, damn it, what does being in love mean if you can't trust a person.
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trust
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Evelyn Waugh |
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3e02658
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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.
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Evelyn Waugh |
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96d94bc
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If you asked me now who I am, the only answer I could give with any certainty would be my name. For the rest: my loves, my hates, down even to my deepest desires, I can no longer say whether these emotions are my own, or stolen from those I once so desperately wished to be.
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Evelyn Waugh |
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9e22afa
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If it could only be like this always - always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe and Aloysius in a good temper...
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teddy-bear
sebastian
summer
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Evelyn Waugh |
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73d12ce
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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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Evelyn Waugh |
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3b033d8
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O God, make me good, but not yet.
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Evelyn Waugh |
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c8898cf
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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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Evelyn Waugh |
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71f59cd
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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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Evelyn Waugh |
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f41d9f0
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To understand all is to forgive all.
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Evelyn Waugh |
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cb306ca
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No one is ever holy without suffering.
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suffering
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Evelyn Waugh |
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49cbb8b
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for in that city [New York] there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.
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new-york-city
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Evelyn Waugh |
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bb9e593
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Where can we hide in fair weather, we orphans of the storm?
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Evelyn Waugh |
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0e0bb4c
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To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.
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Evelyn Waugh |
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2fb1205
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There's only one great evil in the world today. Despair.
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world
evil
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Evelyn Waugh |
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7446672
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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 he was the whole.
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Evelyn Waugh |
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f1f945a
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Change is] the only evidence of life.
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Evelyn Waugh |
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92099a8
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These memories, which are my life--for we possess nothing certainly except the past--were always with me.
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Evelyn Waugh |
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5026af1
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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.
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Evelyn Waugh |
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23bb6a2
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My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time. These memories, which are my life--for we possess nothing certainly except the past--were always with me. Like the pigeons of St. Mark's, they were everywhere, under my feet, singly, in pairs, in little honey-voiced congregations, nodding, strutting, winking, rolling the tender feathers of their necks, perching sometimes, if I stood still, on my shoulder..
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Evelyn Waugh |
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5c0ecdb
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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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Evelyn Waugh |
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7a9392d
|
That was the change in her from ten years ago; that, indeed, was her reward, this haunting, magical sadness which spoke straight to the heart and struck silence; it was the completion of her beauty.
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Evelyn Waugh |
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ea4ad91
|
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 res..
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Evelyn Waugh |
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0ffd826
|
All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist any day.
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sex
|
Evelyn Waugh |
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a64464a
|
No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can't really hate God either. When they want to Hate Him and His saints they have to find something like themselves and pretends it's God and hate that.
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Evelyn Waugh |
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e0ff43f
|
I have a good mind not to take Aloysius to Venice. I don't want him to meet a lot of horrid Italian bears and pick up bad habits.
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travel
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Evelyn Waugh |
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50b2d2f
|
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 throb..
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youth
life
|
Evelyn Waugh |
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0440036
|
His heart; some long word at the heart. He is dying of a long word.
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|
Evelyn Waugh |
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f1ec3cb
|
I can't bare you when you're not amusing.
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Evelyn Waugh |
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cfc2d51
|
she had regained what I thought she had lost forever, the magical sadness which had drawn me to her, the thwarted look that had seemed to say, "Surely I was made for some other purpose than this?"
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Evelyn Waugh |
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1b6ace7
|
Dearest Charles-- I found a box of this paper at the back of a bureau so I must write to you as I am mourning for my lost innocence. It never looked like living. The doctors despaired of it from the start... I am never quite alone. Members of my family keep turning up and collecting luggage and going away again, but the white raspberries are ripe. I have a good mind not to take Aloysius to Venice. I don't want him to meet a lot of horrid It..
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Evelyn Waugh |
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797a19a
|
You can't ever tell what's going to hurt people.
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Evelyn Waugh |
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767d6df
|
He did not fail in love, but he lost the joy of it [...]
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|
Evelyn Waugh |
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cfff440
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But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into the depths of confusion you didn't know existed.
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|
Evelyn Waugh |
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0b9e68a
|
Perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; a hill of many invisible crests; doors that open as in a dream to reveal only a further stretch of carpet and another door; 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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|
Evelyn Waugh |
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11f2a50
|
I had been there before; I knew all about it.
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Evelyn Waugh |
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6524567
|
News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read.
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Evelyn Waugh |
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d724d68
|
Soon someone would say the fatal words, "Well, I think it's time for me to go to bed."
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Evelyn Waugh |
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432a6d2
|
Old boy," said Grimes, "you're in love." "Nonsense!" "Smitten?" said Grimes. "No, no." "The tender passion?" "No." "Cupid's jolly little darts?" "No." "Spring fancies, love's young dream?" "Nonsense!" "Not even a quickening of the pulse?" "No." "A sweet despair?" "Certainly not." "A trembling hope?" "No." "A ? a ?" "Nothing of the sort." "Liar!" said Grimes."
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Evelyn Waugh |
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ff355e9
|
That day was the beginning of my friendship with Sebastian, and thus it came about, that morning in June, that I was lying beside him in the shade of the high elms watching the smoke from his lips drift up into the branches.
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smoke
shade
june
lips
|
Evelyn Waugh |
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35c9523
|
Her heart was broken perhaps, but it was a small inexpensive organ of local manufacture. In a wider and grander way she felt things had been simplified.
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observation
satire
|
Evelyn Waugh |
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684e1b5
|
The human soul enjoys these rare, classical periods, but, apart from them, we are seldom single or unique; we keep company in this world with a hoard of abstractions and reflections and counterfeits of ourselves - the sensual man, the economic man, the man of reason, the beast, the machine and the sleepwalker, and heaven knows what besides, all in our own image, indistinguishable from ourselves to the outside eye. We get borne along, out of..
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|
Evelyn Waugh |
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9528579
|
Of course those that have charm don't really need brains.
|
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humor
|
Evelyn Waugh |