WILL THIS DO ? by Auberon Waugh

Auberon Waugh's autobiography, "Will This Do?" is a wonderful read full of wit and sage advice.
He was once characterised as "without intellectual, aesthetic or spiritual interest" at the age of seven by his father, Evelyn Waugh. He has since proved his father wrong. Here are a couple of tidbits to whet the appetite:

"It was many years before I could break the habit of viewing every event with a
half eye to the bulletin I would send my father. Even now I find when I hear a funny story...I mentally store it away to repeat to him. There always follows a pang of bereavement when he is no longer around to hear it. But the strain of living two lives,one on my own and the one through his eyes, was greatly relieved by his sudden death."

"My grand philosophical conclusion at the end of the day, is that humanity does not divide into the rich and the poor, privileged and the unprivileged, the clever and the stupid, the lucky and the unlucky or even into the happy or the unhappy. It divides into the nasty and the nice. Nasty people are humourless, bitter self-pitying, resentful and mean. They are also, of course invariably miserable. Saints may worry about them and even try to turn their sour natures, but those who do not aspire to saintliness are best advised to avoid them wherever possible, and give their aggression a good run for its money whenever it becomes unavoidable."