E. V. Lucas Quotes

I know nothing of grammar; </br> At school they never could hammer </br> Or beat it into my head. </br> The bare word made me stammer, </br> And turn pale as if I were dead. </br> But here I may as well be telling, </br> I'm often damned out in my spelling.

In France he would have been, I think, a sad bore, for there he would have discovered so many points of superiority to the English: but not even so keen a censor of his own country and countrymen as Mr. Dabney could find aught in Venice, except such forgivable and inimitable advantages as crumbling and picturesque architecture and clear skies, to hold up as a model for home adoption.

Venice indeed imposes laziness. Even Americans doing Europe approach restfulness there. There is no hurrying a gondolier.

The world is a great leveller, and every year brings with it certain modifying influences. I like a man to be his age. Twenty-one is not an age I am very partial to: it is omniscient and exorbitant and cruel; but I like a youth of twenty-one none the less. Forty makes better company: when a man knows how little he knows, and how little life holds for him, and is yet unsubdued.

It is when one reads counsels of something more than perfection — counsels of pedantic priggishness, shall we say — to natural, healthy children, that one realises how necessary compromise is to daily life and how far removed perfection is from the natural human being.

I have noticed that the people who are late are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them.

"What is it like in the air?" I once asked him. </br> "Ripping," he said. </br> "But the sensations?” I continued. “How do you feel?" </br> "Ripping," he said. </br> "And what does the world look like down below as you rush along?" </br> "Ripping," he said.

One must expect inconsistency. Every moment conditions are different, and therefore we are; every moment we are older, and there is less of life to live, and the thought can lead to odd impulses.

It is all to the good that insignificant-looking persons should do great things, but human nature will ever resent it. We are such determined idealists, we have such a passion for symmetry, that our first wish will always be that handsome does and handsome is shall be one.

It came to me this morning all unexpectedly, being the payment of a debt which I had long since given up hope of ever receiving. In other words, it is sheer profit, like all repaid loans.

The French never allow a distinguished son of France to lack a statue.

Libraries...he does not much esteem. People should own their books, he holds ; but that, of course, is a counsel of perfection, or would be were it not for the multitude of reprints that are now to be had at the price of a cigar.

"Lotus-eating would give you a terrible stomachache," I said, "wouldn't it?" </br> And the plucky little creature had the hardihood to reply, "I hope so." </br> What can you do with people like this? and England is full of them. Suspicion of happiness is in our blood.

After my experiences I know that it is not the disposal of books that presents the greatest difficulty to a bookseller, but the acquisition of them.

The man who is so painstakingly cautious about doing his own body no harm seldom does anything for anyone else.