Evelyn Quotes

We possess nothing certainly except the past ~ Evelyn Waugh

Music really is our daily medicine. ~ Evelyn Glennie

We walked out of there, and for the first time I felt the mood of a night without feeling that an author was ramming it down my throat for story purposes. I looked at the clean-swept, star-reaching cubism of the Radio City area and its living snakes of neon, and I suddenly thought of an Evelyn Smith story the general idea of which was "After they found out the atom bomb was magic, the rest of the magicians who enchanted refrigerators and washing machines and the telephone system came out into the open." I felt a breath of wind and wondered what it was that had breathed. I heard the snoring of the city and for an awesome second felt it would roll over, open its eyes, and ... speak. ~ Theodore Sturgeon

The look Evelyn gave to Marley was remarkably similar to her cat's: the casual disinterest of a predator with a full belly. ~ Harry Connolly

When is a game not a game? When the game is afoot. ~ Evelyn Cullet

Art is eternal, but life is short. ~ Evelyn De Morgan

What is your probability of winning twice the New Jersey lottery? One in 17 trillion. Yet it happened to Evelyn Adams, whom the reader might guess should feel particularly chosen by destiny. Using the method we developed above, Harvard's Percy Diaconis and Frederick Mosteller estimated at 30 to 1 the probability that someone, somewhere, in a totally unspecified way, gets so lucky! ~ Fooled By Randomness Nassim Taleb

I didn't decide to become a musician until the age of 15, which is quite late. ~ Evelyn Glennie

Look, Father, I don't think you're being straight with me. I want to join your Church and I'm going to join your Church, but you're holding too much back. I've had a long talk with a Catholic-a very pious, well-educated one, and I've learned a thing or two. For instance, that you have to sleep with your feet pointing East because that's the direction of heaven, and if you die in the night you can walk there. Now I'll sleep with my feet pointing any way that suits Julia, but d'you expect a grown man to believe about walking to heaven? And what about the Pope who made one of his horses a Cardinal? And what about the box you keep in the church porch, and if you put in a pound note with someone's name on it, they get sent to hell. I don't say there mayn't be a good reason for all this, but you ought to tell me about it and not let me find out for myself. ~ Evelyn Waugh

I keep up with everything in terms of health, fitness, nutrition, skin care, hair, nails. Really, everything. I'm an avid reader of every women's health newsletter from every hospital in the country. ~ Evelyn Lauder

You can't be disappointed unless you try something to be disappointed over. ~ Evelyn Keyes

My go-to author for knowing it all is Evelyn Waugh. 'A Handful of Dust' is as perfect as a book can get. ~ Laurie Graham

Sometimes I think the resurrection of the body, unless much improved in construction, a mistake! ~ Evelyn Underhill

Two wives despaired of him,' he said. 'When he got engaged to Sylvia, she made it a condition that he should take the cure at Zurich. And it worked. He came back in three months a different man. And he hasn't touched a drop since, even though Sylvia walked out on him.'
'Why did she do that?'
Well, poor Charlie got rather a bore when he stopped drinking. But that's not really the point of the story. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Ah well, to the journalist every country is rich. ~ Evelyn Waugh

If only people realized Corbusier is pure nineteenth century, Manchester school utilitarian, and that's why they like him. ~ Evelyn Waugh

We think it a very promising little war. A microcosm, as you might say, of world drama. ~ Evelyn Waugh

I just assumed the world was full of solo percussionists. I couldn't find sticks or music or anything where I was, but that was expected because there was nothing there anyway. And I think that was possibly the greatest asset for me, just not knowing. ~ Evelyn Glennie

Not for her the cruel, delicate luxury of choice, the indolent, cat-and-mouse pastimes of the hearth-rug. No Penelope she; she must hunt in the forest. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Hearing is a form of touch. I could hear less through the ears but more through the body. ~ Evelyn Glennie

A conservative is not merely an obstructionist who wishes to resist the introduction of novelties; nor is he, as was assumed by most 19th-century parliamentarians, a brake to frivolous experiment. He has positive work to do ... Civilization has no force of its own beyond what is given from within. It is under constant assault and it takes most of the energies of civilized man to keep going at all ... If [it] falls we shall see not merely the dissolution of a few joint-stock corporations, but of the spiritual and material achievements of our history. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Beware of writing to me. I always answer ... My father spent the last 20 years of his life writing letters. If someone thanked him for a wedding present, he thanked them for thanking him and there was no end to the exchange but death. ~ Evelyn Waugh

If it could only be like this always – always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe and Aloysius in a good temper... ~ Evelyn Waugh

It's the things that you notice when you're not actually with your instrument that, in fact, become so interesting, and that you - you want to explore, through this tiny tiny surface of a drum. ~ Evelyn Glennie

Comparisons are odious. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son. ~ Evelyn Waugh

If politicians and scientists were lazier, how much happier we should all be ~ Evelyn Waugh

Properly understood, style is not a seductive decoration added to a functional structure; it is of the essence of a work of art. The necessary elements of style are lucidity, elegance, and individuality; these three qualities combine to form a preservative which ensures the nearest approximation to permanence in the fugitive art of letters. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Je ne regrette rien," I say, lifting my glass of water and sipping it. "That's the spirit," Evelyn says. "Although that song is more about not regretting because you don't live in the past. What I mean is that I'd still make a lot of the same decisions today. To be clear, there are things I regret. It's just . . . it's not really the sordid things. I don't regret many of the lies I told or the people I hurt. I'm OK with the fact that sometimes doing the right thing gets ugly. And also, I have compassion for myself. I trust myself. Take, for instance, when I snapped at you earlier, back at the apartment, when you said what you did about my confessing sins. It wasn't a nice thing to do, and I'm not sure you deserved it. But I don't regret it. Because I know I had my reasons, and I did the best I could with every thought and feeling that led up to it. ~ Taylor Jenkins Reid

Despite their promises at the last Election, the politicians had not yet changed the climate. ~ Evelyn Waugh

I can't run forever. I decided to go back to school for my degree, because I know now there's more to life than track. ~ Evelyn Ashford

You seem to find everything banal." "it's a new word whose correct use i have only lately learnt,' said josephine with dignity. 'i find it applies to nearly everything. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Looking back, it is also the smallest moments that seem to radiate the most pain. The moments when you realize you loved these people, helplessly, that you were given no choice in this matter of loving them, and that they will always be part of you no matter how you try to carve them out of your flesh. That you are tied to them with bonds you could never sever, that they will live on inside you no matter how many effigies of them you hang and burn, no matter how often their reflections appear in the eyes of other men and women, men and women who then unwittingly play the roles of father and mother, with whom you act out the drama again and again. ~ Evelyn Lau

What is it about being on a boat that makes everyone behave like a film star?
Julia Flyte ~ Evelyn Waugh

Most writers in the course of their careers become thick-skinned and learn to accept vituperation, which in any other profession would be unimaginably offensive, as a healthy counterpoise to unintelligent praise. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Brenda descended the great staircase step by step through alternations of dusk and rainbow. ~ Evelyn Waugh

She wanted again to hold on to him, and have him hold on to her, so they could whirl together through the cosmos like galaxies that could not - and would not - be confined. ~ Evelyn Skye

Soon someone would say the fatal words, Well, I think it's time for me to go to bed. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Idealism, though just in its premises, and often daring and honest in their application, is stultified by the exclusive intellectualism of its own methods: by its fatal trust in the squirrel-work of the industrious brain instead of the piercing vision of the desirous heart. It interests man, but does not involve him in its processes: does not catch him up to the new and more real life which it describes. Hence the thing that matters, the living thing, has somehow escaped it; and its observations bear the same relation to reality as the art of the anatomist does to the mystery of birth. ~ Evelyn Underhill

There is always a moment when you think of death as a way easier than life ... ~ Evelyn Anthony

Success in this world depends on knowing exactly how little effort each job is worth ... distribution of energy ... ~ Evelyn Waugh

Can I call you Fozzie?"
"Can I call you Evelyn?"
"Not if you want me to answer."
"It's safe to say, the same goes for calling me Fozzie. I'm not a Muppet. ~ Renee Ericson

I like the sparkle of the vibraphone. ~ Evelyn Glennie

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

At night his most frequent recurring dream was of doing The Times crossword puzzle; his most disagreeable that he was reading a tedious book aloud to his family. ~ Evelyn Waugh

I regard writing not as an investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Rex has never been unkind to me intentionally. It's just that he isn't a real person at all; he's just a few faculties of a man highly developed; the rest simply isn't there. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Grace is God himself, his loving energy at work within his church and within our souls. ~ Evelyn Underhill

Friendship is the golden thread that ties the heart of all the world. ~ John Evelyn

The audience plays a huge part in how a piece will actually form. They really allow the performers to walk a tightrope in a way that never seems to happen in the privacy of your own four walls. I'm listening to the audience, and they're listening to me. ~ Evelyn Glennie

The most helpful piece of advice that I could give to anybody is to select a charity, or create a charity, that you really feel passionate about and if you do, don't give up. ~ Evelyn Lauder

Why was it that relations between different people were so unsatisfactory, so fragmentary, so hazardous, and words so dangerous ... What had Evelyn really wished to say to him? What was she feeling left alone in the empty hall? The mystery of life and the unreality even of one's own sensations overcame him as he walked down the corridor which led to his room. ~ Virginia Woolf

You shouldn't be in here! ~ Evelyn Winters

No, really Patrick. What do you want me to call you?"

King, I'm thinking. King, Evelyn. I want you to call me King. But I don't say this. "Evelyn. I don't want you to call me anything. I don't think we should see each other anymore."

"But your friends are my friends. My friends are your friends. I don't think it would work," she says, and then, staring at a spot above my mouth, "You have a tiny fleck on the top of your lip. Use your napkin."

Exasperated, I brush the fleck away. "Listen, I, know that your friends are my friends and vice versa. I've thought about that." After a pause I say, breathing in, "You can have them."

Finally she looks at me, confused, and murmurs, "You're really serious, aren't you?"

"Yes", I say, "I am."

"But... what about us? What about the past?" she asks blankly.

"The past isn't real. It's just a dream," I say. "Don't mention the past."

She narrows her eyes with suspicion. "Do you have something against me, Patrick?" And then the hardness in her face changes instantaneously to expectation, maybe hope.

"Evelyn," I sigh. "I'm sorry. You're just... not terribly important... to me. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Cordelia: I hope I've got a vocation.
Charles: I don't know what that means.
Cordelia: It means you can be a nun. If you haven't a vocation it's no good however much you want to be; and if you have a vocation, you can't get away from it, however much you hate it. ~ Evelyn Waugh

The anguished suspense of watching the lips you hunger for, framing the words, the death sentence, of sheer triteness! ~ Evelyn Waugh

You know," he added reflectively, "we've got a much easier job now than we should have had fifty years ago. If we'd had to modernise a country then it would have meant constitutional monarchy, bicameral legislature, proportional representation, women's suffrage, independent judicature, freedom of the press, referendums ... "
"What is all that?" asked the Emperor.
"Just a few ideas that have ceased to be modern. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Mrs. Threadgoode pulled something out of the Cracker Jack box and all of a sudden her eyes lit up. "Oh Evelyn, look! Here's my prize. It's a little miniature chicken ... just what I like!" and she held it out for her friend to see. ~ Fannie Flagg

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. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Remember, it's not magic that defines you. It's YOU that defines you. That's all the truth there is" -Ludmila ~ Evelyn Skye

She sighed and said, "Why not us? Who knows whether you were given this opportunity for such a time as this?"

-Evelyn Coble, Epoch Dawning ~ C.H.E. Sadaphal

Something quite remote from anything the builders intended has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time: a small red flame
a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design, relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones. ~ Evelyn Waugh

I know I am awful. But how much more awful I should be without the Faith. ~ Evelyn Waugh

He lay back for a little in his bed thinking about the smells of food ... of the intoxicating breath of bakeries and dullness of buns ... He planned dinners, of enchanting aromatic foods ... endless dinners, in which one could alternate flavor with flavor from sunset to dawn without satiety, while one breathed great draughts of the bouquet of brandy. ~ Evelyn Waugh

I warn you, sir, I am more than skilled in deadly combat," I said, hoping that was something someone more than skilled in deadly combat might say. ~ Tarun Shanker

Evelyn suspected there was never true equality in marriage. Someone always had stronger feelings, or held the purse strings, or was more persuasive, powerful, and pushy. ~ Victoria Helen Stone

You don't want to threaten me sis. ~ Evelyn Smith

We are not exceptional in our beginnings, we become exceptional by refusing to accept the obstacles which destiny has placed before us. ~ Evelyn J. Hinz

The Pension Dressler stood in a side street and had, at first glance, the air rather of a farm than of a hotel. Frau Dressler's pig, tethered by one hind trotter to the jamb of the front door, roamed the yard and disputed the kitchen scraps with the poultry. He was a prodigious beast. Frau Dressler's guests prodded him appreciatively on the way to the dining-room, speculating on how soon he would be ripe for killing. The milch-goat was allowed a narrower radius; those who kept strictly to the causeway were safe, but she never reconciled herself to this limitation and, day in, day out, essayed a series of meteoric onslaughts on the passers-by, ending, at the end of her rope, with a jerk which would have been death to an animal of any other species. One day the rope would break; she knew it, and so did Frau Dressler's guests. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Choices can be made again. -Evelyn Johnson (Eaton) ~ Veronica Roth

Women are the only oppressed group in our society that lives in intimate association with their opressors. ~ Evelyn Cunningham

The thing about playing percussion is that you can create all these emotions that can be sometimes beautiful, sometimes really ugly, or sometimes sweet, sometimes as big as King Kong and so on. And so there can be a real riot out there, or it can be so refined. ~ Evelyn Glennie

Even on that convivial evening I could feel my host emanating little magnetic waves of social uneasiness, creating, rather, a pool of general embarrassment about himself in which he floated with log-like calm. ~ Evelyn Waugh

What is a "canty day", Dennis?'
'I've never troubled to ask. Something like hogmanay, I expect.'
'What is that?'
'People being sick on the pavement in Glasgow.'
'Oh. ~ Evelyn Waugh

I believe in women. I believe in myself. I believe in my body. ~ Evelyn Ashford

Even more confused than before, I started backing up. I'd go around and get in through the kitchen; David and Raquel had to know what was going on. Unfortunately for all of us, that was when Lend came out the front door, immediately collapsed with a thunk that made me cringe, and - perfect - went completely transparent.
The police officers stopped fighting, every eye glued on my boyfriend, now essentially invisible other than this T-shirt and flannel pajama pants.
"Okay," I said, putting my hands on my hips. "No. This is unacceptable. I don't care what the bleep is going on, we're going to get it settled immediately or I swear I will give you all to the Dark Queen and let her feed on your dreams for the rest of eternity."
Every head turned my direction, their faces a portrait of shock and disbelief.
"What, you've never seen a boy made of water before? Yawn. Go down to the pond - it'll really blow your mind."
One close to the front - barrel-chested, middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and a thick mustache - shook his head as though trying to clear it. "Are you Evelyn Green?"
"Sort of. Mostly. I mean, legally. Again, sort of."
He tried to look at me, but his eyes kept drifting back to Lend. "You're under - We're here to - Could you please come with us?"
I rolled my eyes. "No, I couldn't. You're last place in a very long line of people who want me right now. Besides, I haven't done anything."
"Actually," said a painfully tall an ~ Kiersten White

I like to be surrounded by books. My wife Evelyn has a Ph.D. in comparative literature, so we have a lot of her Spanish and German literature books which are wasted on me, plus a lot of novels and books on art and architecture shared by us both. Evelyn used to edit an art magazine called 'FMR,' so we have a common interest in design. ~ David Chipperfield

Whatever muscles I have are the product of my own hard work and nothing else. ~ Evelyn Ashford

Smack! A large snowball hit the side of the garage.
Evelyn heaved another one, which curved, hitting Ryan who was just coming out of the house. "Hmm, a little off there," he commented, bending down.
Before she could react, he threw a snowball at her. ~ R.A. Rooney

A whole Gothic world had come to grief ... there was now no armour glittering through the forest glades, no embroidered feet on the green sward; the cream and dappled unicorns had fled ... ~ Evelyn Waugh

Putting my hands on my hips, I sighed. "Okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to Unseelie territory, and you're all going to protect me with whatever faerie mojo you have, because I'm pretty sure the Dark Queen will not be very excited to see me. And then I'm going to talk to them."
"Talk to them?" the Light Queen asked.
"Yes," I said, trying to compose a poem on her beauty comparing her to the light of the dawn, to the rays of sunlight piercing clouds after a thunderstorm, to ... Evelyn. I shook my head, trying to clear it. "Gosh, can't you at least try to turn it down? Anyway. We're going to talk to them. If they're anything like your court, a lot of them probably think their queen is a freaking idiot."
The Light Queen's side, white eyebrows rose like a question mark. ~ Kiersten White

Remember that most people, human or cryptid, don't like what they don't understand. They're not wired for that kind of compassion. Feel sorry for them, unless they form an angry mob and march on your house. When that happens, release the hounds. - Evelyn Baker ~ Seanan McGuire

You absurd boy! Oh, Evelyn, I'm so thankful you've come, but what in the world has detained you? I've been sick with apprehension!"
There was a quizzical gleam in the gentleman's eyes, but he said in accents of deep reproach: "Come, come, Mama - !"
"It may be very well for you to say Come, come, Mama," she retorted, "but when you faithfully promised to return not a day later than -" She broke off, staring down at him in sudden doubt.
Abandoning the portmanteau, the gentleman shrugged the greatcoat from his shoulder, pulled off his hat, and mounted the remaining stairs two at a time, saying still more reproachfully: "No, really, Mama! How can you be so unnatural a parent?"
"Kit!" uttered his unnatural parent, in a smothered shriek. "Oh, my darling, my dearest son! ~ Georgette Heyer

Well, well, well, if it isn't Ms. Detention. How was it by the way? I'm sure your father was very proud. ~ Evelyn Smith

In the dying world I come from, quotation is a national vice. ~ Evelyn Waugh

The languor of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! ~ Evelyn Waugh

Half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need. ~ Richard Evelyn Byrd

We class schools into four grades: leading school, first-rate school, good school and school. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Why, Miss Wyndham," Mr. Kent replied, looking as chaste and good as a debutante at her presentation to the Queen. "I think we can all agree it's fair to punish these guilty people feigning innocence every day of their lives, all while helping a wrongfully accused innocent. I would certainly never ask you, but I suspect you agree."

"You cannot simply blackmail people into liking me! ~ Tarun Shanker

From the earliest times the Welsh have been looked upon as an unclean people. It is thus that they have preserved their racial integrity. Their sons and daughters rarely mate with humankind except their own blood relations. ~ Evelyn Waugh

She was daily surprised by the things he knew and the things he did not know; both, at the time, added to his attraction. ~ Evelyn Waugh

The spiritual life of individuals has to be extended both vertically to God
and horizontally to other souls; and the more it grows in both directions, the less merely individual and therefore more truly personal it will become. ~ Evelyn Underhill

They are all negros. And the Fascists won't be called black because of their racial pride, so they are called White after the White Russians. And the Bolsheviks want to be called Black because of their racial pride. So when you say black you mean red, and when you mean red you say white and when the party who call themselves blacks say traitors they mean what we call blacks, but what we mean when we say traitors I really couldn't tell you. But from your point of view it will be quite simple. Lord Copper only wants patriot victories and both sides call themselves patriots, and of course both sides will claim all the victories. But, of course, it's really a war between Russia and Germany and Italy and Japan who are all against one another on the patriotic side. I hope I make myself plain? ~ Evelyn Waugh

Never let school get in the way of your education.
Mark Twain ~ Evelyn Krieger

I paused to listen to the silence. My breath, crystallized as it passed my cheeks, drifted on a breeze gentler than a whisper. The wind vane pointed toward the South Pole. Presently the wind cups ceased their gentle turning as the cold killed the breeze. My frozen breath hung like a cloud overhead. The day was dying, the night being born - but with great peace. Here were the imponderable processes and forces of the cosmos, harmonious and soundless. Harmony, that was it! That was what came out of the silence - a gentle rhythm, the strain of a perfect chord, the music of the spheres, perhaps.
It was enough to catch that rhythm, momentarily to be myself a part of it. In that instant I could feel no doubt of man's oneness with the universe. The conviction came that the rhythm was too orderly, too harmonious, too perfect to be a product of blind chance - that, therefore, there must be purpose in the whole and that man was part of that whole and not an accidental offshoot. It was a feeling that transcended reason; that went to the heart of man's despair and found it groundless. The universe was a cosmos, not a chaos; man was rightfully a part of that cosmos as were the day and night. ~ Richard Evelyn Byrd

The Second World War wasn't bad provided you were with nice people. ~ Evelyn Waugh

The world of religion is no longer a concrete fact proposed for our acceptance and adoration. It is an unfathomable universe which engulfs us, and which lives its own majestic uncomprehended life: and we discover that our careful maps and cherished definitions bear little relation to its unmeasured reality. ~ Evelyn Underhill

Stick around, though. I'm going to need all the help I can get to figure all this out."
"That's me! Mister Helpful. Captain Dependable."
"That sounds like a brand of adult diapers."
"This nickname needs some work. Lord Wonderful? The Incredible Hunk?"
"Please, for the love, go inside."
He laughed, then clomped up the steps and into the house.
"Reth," I shouted. "Reeeeeeeeth! Reth! Reth, Reth, Reth! If you don't come in the next thirty seconds, I'm going to do find David's golf clubs!"
"That tone and level of voice does nothing attractive you for, my love."
I jumped, startled, but of course Reth would be behind me, leaning heavily on the porch railing.
"You," I said, glaring. "Fix it. Now."
A look of disdain on his face, he leaned over and trailed his fingers across Lend's forehead. A single whispered word, and then . . .
Nothing.
"You liar!" I shouted, standing so abruptly that Lend rolled off my lap and down a step. As he hit the first one, color bloomed through him into his usual glamour and his eyes flew open in panic.
"He was asleep, Evelyn." Reth's lips were pursed, but I knew he was smiling gleefully on the inside.
"Lend!" I lunged forward, knocking into him, and we both rolled down the next two steps, landing in a heap on the gravel at the bottom. "You're awake!"
"Evie! I'm . . . wow, why am I so bruised?"
"Shut up," I said, grabbing his head and pulling him in for a kiss. It was freezing a ~ Kiersten White

I want us to be together, Evelyn, which I know won't be easy, but nothing worth having ever comes easy. If there's something you want, you have to work hard to have it. And I want you. ~ Jaci Burton

When people hate with all that energy, it is something in themselves they are hating. Alex is hating all the illusions of boyhood - innocence, God, hope. Poor Lady Marchmain has to bear all that. He loved me for a time, quite a short time, as a man loves his own strength; it is simpler for a woman; she has not all these ways of loving. Now Alex is very fond of me and I protect him from his own innocence. ~ Evelyn Waugh