After all, damn it, what does being in love mean if you can't trust a person.
That's the public-school system all over. They may kick you out, but they never let you down.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the challenges of the public-school system, emphasizing that while students may face setbacks, the system itself remains steadfast.
Evelyn Waugh's quote reflects the paradox of the public-school system, where students may be expelled or face harsh treatment but are still supported by the overarching structure that aims to educate. It suggests that despite potential failures at the individual level, the system continues to function and provide opportunities for learning and growth, embodying a resilience that can be both frustrating and reassuring.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a speech at a school board meeting to discuss educational reform.
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.
There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances.
Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.
...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?
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.
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Oxford is Oxford: not a mere receptacle for youth, like Cambridge. Perhaps it wants its inmates to love it rather than to love one another.
Doctoral training is devoted almost entirely to learning to do research, even though most Ph.Ds who enter academic life spend far more time teaching than they do conducting experiments or writing books.
No adult can bear a childβs burden or grow up in his stead.
There are two subjects, indeed, which I shall claim a right to further as long as I breathe: the public education, and the sub-division of counties into wards. I consider the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging on these two hooks.
You will only get out of a dance class what you bring to it. Learn by practice.