Frasi di Evelyn Waugh pagina 3

“E perché non dovrei esserlo [geloso], quando vedo spendere tanto denaro per dei parenti che furono detestati tutta la vita; mentre i cani che li avevano amati, che erano stati vicini a loro senza chiedere niente, senza lamentarsi, fossero ricchi o poveri, sani o malati, vengono sepolti come va va, proprio da bestie?”

Wilbur Kenworthy, il sognatore.
Il caro estinto

“Molti lasciano declinare prematuramente la propria energia vitale e diminuire la capacità produttiva semplicemente per paura della morte. Eliminando tale paura, prolungano di valore la loro esistenza. Scelga dunque con comodo, e mentre è in buona salute, la forma che più le conviene per l'atto finale; paghi finché è nelle migliori condizioni di farlo; dia il bando a tutte le preoccupazioni. Lasci fare a noi, signor Barlow, la nostra Istituzione se la caverà.”

Il caro estinto

“[Mr. Corker:] È stato quel trucco della barba. Sapevo che ci avrebbe messo nei guai.
– Ma è un impiegato delle ferrovie. L'ho visto nella biglietteria oggi, quando sono andato a chiedere del mio bagaglio.
– Certo che lo è. Ma a noi che ce ne importa? Schumble ha lanciato la notizia e adesso noi dobbiamo trovare un agente rosso o siamo fritti.
– Oppure spiegare l'errore.
– Rischioso, vecchio mio, e poco professionale. Sono quelle cose che puoi fare una volta o due in caso di vera emergenza, ma non conviene. I giornali non stampano smentite, è ovvio: diminuisce la fiducia del pubblico nella stampa. E poi si dà l'impressione che noi non facciamo bene il nostro mestiere. Sarebbe troppo facile se ogni volta che uno ha una notizia in esclusiva, il resto del branco la smentisse. E debbo riconoscere che quella di Schumble è stata un'ottima idea … la barba ha avuto la sua parte, naturalmente… avrei potuto pensarci io stesso, se non fossi stato così arrabbiato.”

Il caro estinto

Evelyn Waugh libro L'inviato speciale

dialogo fra Mr. Corker e Mr. William Boot, libro II, Stones 20 £, cap. 1, XI
L'inviato speciale
Origine: Nome gergale dato nel testo al gruppo di inviati speciali concentrati in una determinata zona per il medesimo motivo.

Evelyn Waugh Frasi e Citazioni

“Corker lo guardò sconsolato: Sa che le dico? Lei deve imparare ancora molte cose sul giornalismo. Mettiamola così. Le notizie sono quella cosa che un tale che non si interessa un gran ché di nulla vuole leggere. Ed è notizia fin tanto che lui la legge. Dopo, è morta. Noi siamo pagati per fornire notizie. Se qualcun altro ha mandato un dispaccio prima di noi, la nostra storia non fa notizia. Certo, c'è il colore. Il colore è un mucchio di chiacchiere a vuoto: facile da scrivere e facile da leggere, ma costa troppo in telegrammi, per cui dobbiamo andarci piano. Capito?”

Evelyn Waugh libro L'inviato speciale

L'inviato speciale

“È un istinto naturale di ritirarsi davanti all'ignoto.”

“[Funzionario:] Anche ammettendo che a Ismaelia ci sia il petrolio, come intende farlo uscire?
– Ma io non ho alcun interesse per il commercio. Vado a farci la cronaca della guerra.
– La guerra non è che commercio.”

Il caro estinto

Evelyn Waugh libro L'inviato speciale

dialogo fra Mr. W. Boot e un funzionario coloniale francese, libro I, The Stitch service, cap. 5, I
L'inviato speciale

“Languisco lentamente tra le tue braccia, in questo silenzioso confine del mondo.”

“Quando la gente odia con tanta foga, vuol dire che odia qualcosa che ha dentro di sé.”

Il caro estinto

Evelyn Waugh libro Ritorno a Brideshead

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

Evelyn Waugh: Frasi in inglese

“…But I saw today there was one thing unforgivable - like things in the school-room, so bad they were unpunishable, that only mummy could deal with - the bad thing I was on the point of doing, that I'm not quite bad enough to do; to set up a rival good to God's.”

“A copy of Dante's Purgatorio excited his especial disgust."French, eh?" he said. "I guessed as much, and pretty dirty too, I shouldn't wonder. Now just you wait while I look up these here books"—how he said it!—"in my list. Particularly against books the Home Secretary is. If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside."”

Evelyn Waugh libro Ritorno a Brideshead

Part 3, near end of chapter 5
Brideshead Revisited (1945)

“The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant they are”

Evelyn Waugh libro Vile Bodies

Origine: Vile Bodies (1930), Chapter 2

“It's the seed of life we carry about with us like our skeletons, each one of us unconsciously pregnant with desirable villa residences. There's no escape. As individuals we simply do not exist. We are just potential home builders, beavers, and ants. How do we come into being? What is birth?”

Evelyn Waugh libro Ritorno a Brideshead

Part 1, Chapter 3
Brideshead Revisited (1945)

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

Evelyn Waugh libro Declino e caduta

Part One, Chapter XII
Decline and Fall (1928)

“I came to the conclusion many years ago that almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.”

Evelyn Waugh libro Put Out More Flags

Origine: Put Out More Flags (1942), Ch. 1: Autumn, § 7

“And the only interest about him arises from the unusual series of events of which his shadow was witness.”

Evelyn Waugh libro Declino e caduta

Decline and Fall (1928)

“She seemed to say "Look at me. I have done my share. I am beautiful. It is something quite out of the ordinary, this beauty of mine. I am made for delight. But what do I get out of it? Where is my reward?"”

Evelyn Waugh libro Declino e caduta

Decline and Fall (1928)

“I put the words down and push them a bit.”

Evelyn Waugh libro Ritorno a Brideshead

Part 3, Chapter 4
Brideshead Revisited (1945)

“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.”

As quoted in his obituary in The New York Times (11 April 1966)

“Please bear in mind throughout that IT IS MEANT TO BE FUNNY.”

Evelyn Waugh libro Ritorno a Brideshead

Brideshead Revisited (1945)

“That's the public-school system all over. They may kick you out, but they never let you down.”

Evelyn Waugh libro Declino e caduta

Author's note
Decline and Fall (1928)

“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.”

Evelyn Waugh libro Declino e caduta

Decline and Fall (1928)

“His courtesy was somewhat extravagant. He would write and thank people who wrote to thank him for wedding presents and when he encountered anyone as punctilious as himself the correspondence ended only with death.”

Evelyn Waugh libro Declino e caduta

Decline and Fall (1928)

“There will be a prize of half a crown for the longest essay, irrespective of any possible merit.”

As quoted in LIFE magazine (8 April 1946)

“Aesthetic value is often the by-product of the artist striving to do something else.”

Evelyn Waugh libro Declino e caduta

Decline and Fall (1928)

“Lord Copper quite often gave banquets; it would be an understatement to say that no one enjoyed them more than the host, for no one else enjoyed them at all, while Lord Copper positively exulted in every minute.”

Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (1976)

“Of children as of procreation— the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable.”

Evelyn Waugh libro L'inviato speciale

Scoop (1938)

“Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay intimacy of the slums who find prison so soul-destroying.”

Letter to Nancy Mitford, May 5, 1954, cited from Mark Amory (ed.) The Letters of Evelyn Waugh (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982) p. 423
"The pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable" is sometimes attributed to Lord Chesterfield (British statesman, diplomat and wit, 1694-1773), but has not been found in his works.

“We possess nothing certainly except the past.”

Evelyn Waugh libro Declino e caduta

Decline and Fall (1928)

“Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole.”

Evelyn Waugh libro Ritorno a Brideshead

Part 3, start of chapter 1
Brideshead Revisited (1945)

“His strongest tastes were negative. He abhorred plastics, Picasso, sunbathing and jazz — everything in fact that had happened in his own lifetime.”

Evelyn Waugh libro L'inviato speciale

An oft-quoted example of William Boot's style. When first mentioned in the novel it is "splashy" and not "plashy", but this is a remembrance of another journalist; when Boot himself quotes it, he has "plashy".
Scoop (1938)

“I couldn't understand why God had made the world at all…' I asked my bishop; he didn't know. He said that he didn't think the point arose as far as my practical duties as a parish priest were concerned..”

Evelyn Waugh libro The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold

Origine: The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957), Chapter 1

“They should have told me that at the end of that gay journey and flower-strewn path were the hideous lights of home and the voices of children.”

Evelyn Waugh libro Declino e caduta

Mr Prendergast, Part One , Chapter IV
Decline and Fall (1928)

“Creative Endeavour lost her wings, Mrs. Ape.”

Evelyn Waugh libro Declino e caduta

Decline and Fall (1928)

“Other nations use 'force'; we Britons alone use 'Might.”

Evelyn Waugh libro Vile Bodies

Origine: Vile Bodies (1930), Chapter 1

“There is a species of person called a 'Modern Churchman' who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not commit himself to any religious belief”

Evelyn Waugh libro L'inviato speciale

Scoop (1938)

“I'm one of the blind alleys off the main road of procreation.”

Evelyn Waugh libro Declino e caduta

Decline and Fall (1928)

“While still a young man, John Courteney Boot had, as his publisher proclaimed, "achieved an assured and enviable position in contemporary letters."”

Evelyn Waugh libro Declino e caduta

Grimes
Decline and Fall (1928)

“I had warned my father that my viva might mean a second. It meant a third, and I was overcome with regret, not, I am ashamed to say, for the giddy nights, but for the sober ones. I had not done much work, but I had done some. Had I known I was only to get a third I would not have wasted my time.”

Evelyn Waugh libro L'inviato speciale

Opening lines
Scoop (1938)