"Decline and Fall"

[fiefoe]

Wasn't sure if two boarding school novels in a row is a good idea, but of course Evelyn Waugh's tone is entirely different and reminds me more of Candide.

• We schoolmasters must temper discretion with deceit.
• Very hard for a man with a wig to keep order.
• was ‘singularly in harmony with the primitive promptings of humanity.’ I’ve remembered that phrase
• I cannot help thinking that it is in greater fastidiousness rather than in greater self-control that the future progress of the race lies.
• as gentlemen, and by that they have meant, among other things, a self-respecting scorn of irregular perquisites.
• There aren’t many left like him nowadays, what with education and whisky the price it is.
• Still, it was discouraging launching heat after heat and none coming back. Like sending troops into battle, you know.”
• “Am I going to die?” said Tangent, his mouth full of cake.
• “Then clearly he has won the five furlongs race, a very exacting length.” “But the other boys,” said Lady Circumference, almost beside herself with rage, “have run six lengths.” “Then they,” said the Doctor imperturbably, “are first, second, third, fourth and fifth respectively in the Three Miles. Clearly there has been some confusion.
• But what has disturbed and grieved me more than I can moderately express
• “I don’t believe,” said Mr. Prendergast, “that people would ever fall in love or want to be married if they hadn’t been told about it. It’s like abroad: no one would want to go there if they hadn’t been told it existed. Don’t you agree?”
• What an immature, self-destructive, antiquated mischief is man! How obscure and gross his prancing and chattering on his little stage of evolution! How loathsome and beyond words boring all the thoughts and self-approval of this biological by-product! This half-formed, ill-conditioned body! This erratic maladjusted mechanism of his soul: on one side the harmonious instincts and balanced responses of the animal, on the other the inflexible purpose of the engine, and between them man, equally alien from the being of Nature and the doing. {Remember Withnail and I?}
• In fact, the whole of this book is really an account of the mysterious disappearance of Paul Pennyfeather, so that readers must not complain if the shadow which took his name does not amply fill the important part of hero for which he was originally cast... Paul Pennyfeather would never have made a hero, and the only interest about him arises from the unusual series of events of which his shadow was witness.
• “It is Sunday. I think cards are divine, particularly the kings. Such naughty old faces! But if I start playing for money I always lose my temper and cry. Ask Pamela; she’s so brave and manly.”
• “It’s maddenin’ Tangent having died just at this time,” she said. “People may think that that’s my reason for refusin’. I can’t imagine that anyone will go.”
• The just censure of society,” remarked the judge, “is accorded to those so inconstant and intemperate that they must take their pleasures in the unholy market of humanity that still sullies the fame of our civilization;
• You could see with that unfortunate man just now what a difference it made to him to think that, far from being a mere nameless slave, he has now become part of a great revolution in statistics.”
• a growing conviction that there was something radically inapplicable about this whole code of ready-made honor that is the still small voice, trained to command, of the Englishman all the world over.
• Surely he had followed in the Bacchic train of distant Arcady, and played on the reeds of myth by forgotten streams, and taught the childish satyrs the art of love... {?}
• And he gave another shattering wink.
• People get hold of ideas about life, and that makes them think they’ve got to join in the game, even if they don’t enjoy it. It doesn’t suit everyone.