Quotes from A Handful of Dust

Evelyn Waugh ·  308 pages

Rating: (20.1K votes)


“You can't ever tell what's going to hurt people.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from A Handful of Dust


“It would be a dull world if we all thought alike.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from A Handful of Dust


“Brenda descended the great staircase step by step through alternations of dusk and rainbow.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from A Handful of Dust


“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, quote from A Handful of Dust


“A wonderfully congenial group who live by a unique set of social standards. According to their rules, any sin is acceptable provided it is carried off in good taste.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from A Handful of Dust



About the author

Evelyn Waugh
Born place: in Combe Florey, Somerset, England, The United Kingdom
Born date October 28, 1903
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Popular quotes

“If I had to guess, nephew, I would surmise that you are not in direct trouble as such. However, I will confess to the distinct and unsettling feeling that very large, very ponderous and most momentous wheels have been set in motion. When that happens I believe the lessons of history tend to indicate that it is best not to be in their way. Even without meaning harm, the workings and progress of such wheels are on a scale which inevitably reduces the worth of individual lives to an irrelevance at best.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Algebraist


“Johnson told the doctors that “he enjoyed nothing but whiskey, sunshine and sex.” Reedy found the moment “poignant,” he was to recall. “Without realizing what he was doing, he had outlined succinctly the tragedy of his life. The only way he could get away from himself was sensation: sun, booze, sex.”
― Robert A. Caro, quote from Master of the Senate


“Accordingly tree trunks or very stout boughs were cut and their tops stripped of bark and sharpened; they were then fixed in long trenches dug five feet deep, with their lower ends made fast to one another to prevent their being pulled up and the branches projecting. There were five rows in each trench, touching one another and interlaced, and anyone who went among them was likely to impale himself on the sharp points. The soldiers called them boundary posts. In front of them, arranged in diagonal rows forming quincunxes, were pits three feet deep, tapering gradually towards the bottom, in which were embedded smooth logs as thick as a man’s thigh, with the ends sharpened and charred, and projecting only three inches above ground. To keep the logs firmly in position, earth was thrown into the pits and trodden down to a depth of one foot, the rest of the cavity being filled with twigs and brushwood to hide the trap. These were planted in groups, each containing eight rows three feet apart, and they were nicknamed lilies from their resemblance to that flower. In front of these again were blocks of wood a foot long with iron hooks fixed in them, called goads by the soldiers. These were sunk right into the ground and strewn thickly everywhere.”
― Gaius Julius Caesar, quote from The Conquest of Gaul


“Thunderously, inarguably, the Sermon on the Mount proves that before God we all stand on level ground: murderers and temper-throwers, adulterers and lusters, thieves and coveters. We are all desperate, and that is in fact the only state appropriate to a human being who wants to know God. Having fallen from the absolute Ideal, we have nowhere to land but in the safety net of absolute grace.”
― Philip Yancey, quote from The Jesus I Never Knew


“Just as I am drifting off to sleep, he speak again, so softly I almost cannot be certain it is not a dream.

"I am sorry. You make me ashamed of what we are, of what little we can offer you, and I lashed out at you when what I really wanted was to punish my own dark thoughts.”
― Robin LaFevers, quote from Mortal Heart


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