E. V. Lucas Quotes

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

As a child I had no doubts; but now? Take, for instance, telling the truth. I was brought up to believe that one should do that, and I knew a lie a mile off. But now I see that mendacity, or at any rate the suppression of one's real feelings and opinions, is the cement that binds society together.

"Well," I said, "I'm sorry if cheerfulness is so impracticable. It would be new, at any rate, and novelty is said to be a great thing." </br> "Not in songs," replied Alf. "They don't want anything new in songs except the tune. They've all got to be about the same things for ever and ever.”

This little book...is just a garland of good or enkindling poetry and prose fitted to urge folk into the open air...with perhaps a phrase or two for the feet to step to and the mind to brood on when the rest is over.

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.

Life is strangely suspicious and impatient of youth and candour and innocence and naïveté. Hardly does it perceive these exquisite qualities to exist than it rubs away their bloom with a rough finger. How often one longs for an arrested progress — for a little girl to go on being a little girl a little longer; for the perpetual kitten of our dreams! But no; the Creator is not that kind of artist.

Americans are people who prefer the Continent to their own country, but refuse to learn its languages.

She doesn't love you because of anything — she loves. She doesn't care whether you are handsome or ugly, or old or young, or cruel or kind, or strong or weak, or conceited Or humble, whether you drop your h's, or have nothing in the bank — those things are beside the mark, because she loves.

I walked back by way of the sea-lions' enclosure to refresh my eyes with the King Penguin's perfect ecclesiastical tailoring. He was pacing moodily about as usual, in what one felt to be the interval between a marriage ceremony and a funeral service. Much better, I thought, to have left the £2000 a year to him. No harm would then be done, and what perfect episcopal garden-parties he could give with it!

The smell of autumnal woods, as well as of coffee roasting in the towns, is among the few things that the French arrange better than we.

People in hotels strike no roots. The French phrase for chronic hotel guests even says so: they are called dwellers sur la branche.

We have to remember that children, as creatures of delight, are of comparatively recent discovery....A few poets had praised the young very gaily — Prior and Ambrose Phillips, for example — but rather as courtiers than human beings: it was left for Blake first to see that the child was not merely the young of man but a separate creature, filled with fugitive and exquisite charm.

Virtue we still consider the best goal for others: but for ourselves, success. Success is the new god, and will be, I suppose, for some time yet, so zealously is the altar flame guarded.

The initial difficulty...having been slowly overcome...all went very smoothly, and the family quickly dropped company manners and showed me what it really was. Not that the difference was very marked, but a difference of course there always is — company manners being for the most part a kind of sandpaper that removes the asperities (and occasionally the attractions) of personality.

"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.