After all, damn it, what does being in love mean if you can't trust a person.
Evelyn WaughRead
If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests an attempt to control literature within a country while resisting external influences.
Evelyn Waugh's quote reflects a concern over the impact of foreign literature on a national cultural identity. It implies that if a government or society cannot entirely eliminate literature that it disagrees with, it can at least make efforts to prevent external influences from permeating its own literary landscape, highlighting the ongoing tension between censorship and cultural exchange.
Themes
LiteratureCensorshipCultural IdentityInfluenceNationalism
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the importance of protecting local culture during a literature festival.
More from Evelyn Waugh
All quotes βIt is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.
Evelyn WaughRead
There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances.
Evelyn WaughRead
Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.
Evelyn WaughRead
...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 WaughRead
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 WaughRead
Similar quotes
We did meet forty years ago. At that time we were both influenced by Whitman and I said, jokingly in part, 'I don't think anything can be done in Spanish, do you?' Neruda agreed, but we decided it was too late for us to write our verse in English. We'd have to make the best of a second-rate literature.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
I suppose books mean more than people to me anyway
F. Scott FitzgeraldRead
People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.
Flannery O'ConnorRead
Literature is dangerous: it awakens a rebellious attitude in us.
Mario Vargas LlosaRead
Not very good, I am afraid. But now really, do not you think Udolpho the nicest book in the world?" "The nicestβby which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend upon the binding.
Jane AustenRead
Short fiction and the novel, nonfiction and fiction, electronic texts and books - these are not opposites. One need not destroy the other to survive.
Celeste NgRead