Evelyn Waugh Quotes

Politicians like to tell people what they want to hear - and what they want to hear is what won't happen.

Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch.

Vain hopes are like certain dreams of those who wake.

If we got one-tenth of what was promised to us in these acceptance speeches there wouldn't be any inducement to go to heaven.

I formulated the theme behind 'The Grand Illusion' album after observing how American culture creates illusions through advertising and entertainment to convince us that our lives our lacking, in order to sell products.

There ain't no Coupe Deville hiding at the bottom of a Cracker Jacks box.

People almost always imagine that life is going to be better in town and that the streets of the town are paved with gold.

When beggars and shoeshine boys, barbers and beauticians can tell you how to get rich it is time to remind yourself that there is no more dangerous illusion than the belief that one can get something for nothing.

Most religion-mongers have bated their paradises with a bit of toasted cheese. They have tempted the body with large promises of possessions in their transmortal El Dorado. Sancho Panza will not quit his chimney-corner, but under promise of imaginary islands to govern.

Online gambling is very seductive and very illusory. It can seem like a really good idea. It can seem like what people told you to work hard and get ahead, but when someone shows you something and it's too good to be true, it probably is.

We talk about God as though he was like a somebody. We ask him to bless our nation, or save our Queen, or give us a fine day for the picnic. And we actually expect him to be on our side in an election or war even though our opponents are also God's children.

It's about thinking that being blonde and slim and perfect will automatically bring you happiness, and then discovering that life is full of as many disappointments as there were before.

Women are like dreams, they are never the way you would like to have them.

Not as she is, but as she fills his dream

When it comes to bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims: religion... Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do.

And never since harvests were ripened, / Or laborers born, / Have men gathered figs of the thistle, / Or grapes of the thorn!

Two or three angels Came near to the earth. They saw a fat church. Little black streams of people Came and went in continually. And the angels were puzzled To know why the people went thus, And why they stayed so long within.

Health foods make promises that only the Second Coming could fulfill.

Everyone in Annawadi talks like this: 'Oh, I will make my child a doctor, a lawyer, and he will make us rich'. It's vanity, nothing more. Your little boat goes west and you congratulate yourself, 'what a navigator I am!' And then the wind blows you east.

Walk with care in dark places, and do not put your faith in anyone who promises you the forgiveness of the Lord or a certain place in Paradise.

False fancy brings real misery.

If you're utopian, you're never satisfied.

The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal.

For this remains as I have already pointed out the essential difference between the two religions of decadence : Buddhism promises nothing, but actually fulfils; Christianity promises everything, but fulfils nothing.