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.

The splendid thing about education is that everyone wants it. Like influenza, you can give it away without losing any of it yourself.

I can't bare you when you're not amusing.

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.

There is something incomparably thrilling in first opening a brand new book.

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

You can't ever tell what's going to hurt people.