Brideshead Revisited

by Evelyn Waugh

the black hours which, like zero on the roulette table, turn up with roughly calculable regularity.

It is typical of Oxford,” I said, “to start the new year in autumn.”

“I feel middle-aged. That is infinitely worse. I believe we have had all the fun we can expect here.”

How could I have known? There seemed time for everything in those days; the world was open to be explored at leisure.

I took it to be youth, not life, that I was losing.

She was not, as I have said, a woman of high ambition, but, having had her expectations so much raised, it was disconcerting to be brought so low so suddenly.

“O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin,”

I’m homeless, childless, middle-aged, love-less, Hooper.” He looked to see if I was being funny, decided that I was, and laughed.