Men at Arms Quotes

“This war has begun in darkness and it will end in silence.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Men at Arms

“As ants, so soldiers. In the years to come he was to see the process at work again and again, sometimes in grim circumstances, sometimes in pleasant domesticity. Men unnaturally removed from wives and family began at once to build substitute homes, to paint and furnish, to make flower-beds and edge them with white-washed pebbles, to stitch cushion-covers on lonely gun-sites.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Men At Arms

“The Brigadier spoke of trip-wires, detonators, anti-personnel mines. He described in detail an explosive goat which he had once contrived and driven into a Bedouin encampment. Seldom had he been more exuberant.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Men at Arms

“Most English gentlemen at this time believed that they had a particular aptitude for endearing themselves to the lower classes.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Men At Arms

“When it was done, Guy studied himself once more in the glass and recognized an old acquaintance he could never cut, to whom he could never hope to give the slip for long, the uncongenial fellow traveler who would accompany him through life.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Men At Arms

“As Guy passed a member who greeted him another turned and asked : “Who was that ? Someone new isn’t it?”

‘No, he’s belonged for ages. You’ll never guess who he is. Virginia Troy’s first husband.’

‘Really? I thought she was married to Tommy Blackhouse.’

‘This chap was before Tommy. Can’t remember his name. I think he lives in Kenya. Tommy took her from him, then Gussie had her for a bit, then Bert Troy picked her up when she was going spare.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Men at Arms

“They were so busy in those weeks with their own homebuilding, repairing, rearranging, improvising, that the great storm that was shaking the world passed overhead unnoticed until the crash of a bough set all the hidden roots again vibrating.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Men At Arms

“England had declared war to defend the independence of Poland. Now that country had quite disappeared and the two strongest states in the world guaranteed her extinction.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Men At Arms

“For Guy the news quickened the sickening suspicion he had tried to ignore, had succeeded in ignoring more often than not in his service in the Halberdiers; that he was engaged in a war in which courage and a just cause were quite irrelevant to the issue.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Men At Arms

“After all, he reflected, his whole uniform was a disguise, his whole new calling a masquerade.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Men At Arms

“Well, it’ll be a long war. There’ll be fun for us all in the end.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Men At Arms

“I heard someone say that this was a very exclusive war.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Men At Arms