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The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Edward St. Aubyn

Edward St. Aubyn

People never remember happiness with the care that they lavish on preserving every detail of their suffering.

happiness, suffering

Edward St. Aubyn

Were the ironies of taxation any better: raising money for schools and hospitals and roads and bridges, and spending it on blowing up schools and hospitals and roads and bridges in self-defeating wars?

anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, anti-war, socialism

Edward St. Aubyn

Was he, after all, really a bad man doing a brilliant impersonation of an idiot? It was hard to tell. The connections between stupidity and malice were so tangled and so dense.

seamus-dourke, stupidity

Edward St. Aubyn

His conscience, like a sunburnt scorpion, was stinging itself to death.

Edward St. Aubyn

An image flashed across her mind of two rams flinging their heads against each other on a rocky mountainside. What did the girl rams do? Faint with pleasure? Clap their cloven hooves? Lean against some nearby boulders, with little tubs of mountain grass, discussing the battle?

butting-their-heads, discussing, girl-rams, pleasure, rams

Edward St. Aubyn

If anything should take place behind closed doors, it was cruelty and betrayal.

betrayal, closed-doors, cruelty

Edward St. Aubyn

Everything was usual. That was depression: being stuck, clinging to an out-of-date version of oneself.

Edward St. Aubyn

The measure of a work of art is how much art it has in it, not how much ‘relevance’. Relevant to whom? Relevant to what? Nothing is more ephemeral than a hot topic.

art, literature

Edward St. Aubyn

There seemed to be no one in a position of power, from the Vatican to Wall Street, from Parliament to Scotland Yard to Fleet Street, who could think of anything better to do than abuse it….

Edward St. Aubyn

No pain is too small if it hurts, but any pain is too big if it’s cherished.

Edward St. Aubyn

Everything was usual. That was depression: being stuck, clinging to an out-of-date version of oneself.

Edward St. Aubyn

The measure of a work of art is how much art it has in it, not how much ‘relevance’. Relevant to whom? Relevant to what? Nothing is more ephemeral than a hot topic.

art, literature