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"Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction."
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"The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means."

"Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."

"Freedom and fullness of expression are of the essence of the art."

"And it seemed at last that there were two musics progressing at one time before the seat of IlAovatar, and they were utterly at variance. The one was deep and wide ad beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow from which its beauty chiefly came."

"Most critics, fond of subservient artstill make the whole depend upon a part.They talk of principles, but notions prizeAnd all to one loved folly sacrifice."

"One should be a painter. As a writer, I feel the beauty, which is almost entirely colour, very subtle, very changeable, running over my pen, as if you poured a large jug of champagne over a hairpin."

"Art and the artist meet in stages, slowly revealing themselves until both are satisfied with what the other has become."

"A picture is a voiceless poem, a poem is a vocal picture."

"It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around."
Explore more quotes by Evelyn Waugh

"News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead."

"Pray always for all the learned, the oblique, the delicate. Let them not be quite forgotten at the throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom."

"Professional reviewers read so many bad books in the course of duty that they get an unhealthy craving for arresting phrases."

"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."

"One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die."

"He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich."
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