[b]Evelyn Waugh
My unhealthy affection for my second daughter has waned. Now I despise all my seven children equally.[/b]
He’ll just leave it to our imagination.
Evelyn Waugh: How do you get your main pleasure in life, Sir William?
Sir William Beveridge: I get mine trying to leave the world a better place than I found it.
Waugh: I get mine spreading alarm and despondency and I get more satisfaction than you do.
Let’s choose sides.
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 sight in the press, unresisting, till we get the chance to drop behind unnoticed, or to dodge down a side street, pause, breathe freely and take our bearings, or to push ahead, outdistance our shadows, lead them a dance, so that when at length they catch up with us, they look at one another askance, knowing we have a secret we shall never share.
Yep, that’s how it works alright. And whether you know it or not.
Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.
On the other hand, what’s pretty next to beautiful?
Of course those that have charm don’t really need brains.
On the other hand, what’s charm next to beauty?
Pray always for all the learned, the oblique, the delicate. Let them not be quite forgotten at the throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom.
Hordes and hordes of them no doubt. Just like down here.