Quotes from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“It doesn't matter what people call you unless they call you pigeon pie and eat you up.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then, when I'm old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“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, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“If it could only be like this always – always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe and Aloysius in a good temper...”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“Perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; vagabond-language scrawled on gate-posts and paving-stones along the weary road that others have tramped before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant people are. With anyone over fifty you can be fairly confident what's been taught and what's been left out. But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into depths of confusion you didn't know existed.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“O God, make me good, but not yet.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“I felt that I was leaving part of myself behind, and that wherever I went afterwards I should feel the lack of it, and search for it hopelessly, as ghosts are said to do, frequenting the spots where they buried material treasures without which they cannot pay their way to the nether world.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“To understand all is to forgive all.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“No one is ever holy without suffering.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“...for in that city [New York] there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“Where can we hide in fair weather, we orphans of the storm?”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“He wasn't a complete human being at all. He was a tiny bit of one, unnaturally developed; something in a bottle, an organ kept alive in a laboratory. I thought he was a sort of primitive savage, but he was something absolutely modern and up-to-date that only this ghastly age could produce. A tiny bit of a man pretending he was the whole.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“... To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time. These memories, which are my life—for we possess nothing certainly except the past—were always with me. Like the pigeons of St. Mark’s, they were everywhere, under my feet, singly, in pairs, in little honey-voiced congregations, nodding, strutting, winking, rolling the tender feathers of their necks, perching sometimes, if I stood still, on my shoulder or pecking a broken biscuit from between my lips; until, suddenly, the noon gun boomed and in a moment, with a flutter and sweep of wings, the pavement was bare and the whole sky above dark with a tumult of fowl. Thus it was that morning.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“[Change is] the only evidence of life.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“These memories, which are my life--for we possess nothing certainly except the past--were always with me.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“I've always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. ... Or it may be a private bargain between me and God, that if I give up this one thing I want so much, however bad I am, He won't quite despair of me in the end.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman's day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days - such as that day - when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth. It was this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamour.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“I have a good mind not to take Aloysius to Venice. I don't want him to meet a lot of horrid Italian bears and pick up bad habits.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“That was the change in her from ten years ago; that, indeed, was her reward, this haunting, magical sadness which spoke straight to the heart and struck silence; it was the completion of her beauty.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can't really hate God either. When they want to Hate Him and His saints they have to find something like themselves and pretends it's God and hate that.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“His heart; some long word at the heart. He is dying of a long word.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“The langour of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth - all save this come and go with us through life...These things are a part of life itself; but languor - the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding, the sun standing still in the heavens and the earth throbbing to our own pulse - that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“...she had regained what I thought she had lost forever, the magical sadness which had drawn me to her, the thwarted look that had seemed to say, "Surely I was made for some other purpose than this?”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“Dearest Charles--
I found a box of this paper at the back of a bureau so I must write to you as I am mourning for my lost innocence. It never looked like living. The doctors despaired of it from the start...
I am never quite alone. Members of my family keep turning up and collecting luggage and going away again, but the white raspberries are ripe.
I have a good mind not to take Aloysius to Venice. I don't want him to meet a lot of horrid Italian bears and pick up bad habits.
Love or what you will.
S.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“He did not fail in love, but he lost the joy of it [...]”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into the depths of confusion you didn't know existed.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

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