"When I gadded, among savages and people of fashion and politicians and crazy generals, it was because I enjoyed them. I have settled down now because I ceased to enjoy them and because I have found a much more abiding interest—the English language. My father, who was a respected literary critic of his day, first imbued me with the desire to learn this language, of which he had a mastery. It is the most lavish and delicate which mankind has ever known. It is in perpetual danger of extinction and has survived so far by the combination of a high civilized society, where it was spoken and given its authority and sanctity, with a thin line of devotees who made its refinement and adornment their life's work. The first of these is being destroyed; if the thing is to be saved it will be by the second."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Novelists from EnglandCatholics from EnglandTravel writersPeople from LondonBiographers from England
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
'Fan-Fare', Life (8 April 1946), pp. 53-54
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Evelyn_Waugh
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), the novel Brideshead Revisited (1945), and the Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour (1952–1961). He is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century.
121 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Evelyn Waugh →
Related Quotes
"Punctuality is the virtue of the bored."
"It is one of the facts of history that it is impossible for two peoples of widely different culture to live peaceably…"
"I find the new liturgy a temptation against Faith, Hope and Charity but I shall never, pray God, apostatise."
"None of the great movements of the nineteenth century is more typical of its age than that for the freeing of the sla…"
"There are always honourable exceptions in any general racial condemnation, and, heaven knows, the white people of the…"
"It is not the state of slavery so much as the process of enslavement that is intolerable: and it is worth noting that…"
"William Wilberforce was inflated by the true nineteenth-century arrogance of thinking that a little local uplift coul…"
"Mrs. Ape's famous hymn, There ain't no flies on the Lamb of God."
"Nice to go to Rome. They are destroying all that was superficially attractive about my Church. It is a great sorrow t…"
"Up to a point, Lord Copper."