You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.

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.

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

Words should be an intense pleasure just as leather should be to a shoemaker.

Money is only useful when you get rid of it. It is like the odd card in 'Old Maid'; the player who is finally left with it has lost.

that is not the last word; it is not even an apt word; it is a dead word from ten years back.

Once you start changing a name, you see, there's no reason ever to stop. One always hears one that sounds better.