Top 15 E. V. Lucas Quotes

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

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

I should have remembered that black is the colour of France. Amusing that the typical figure of that country in so many people's imagination is a saucy girl with little or nothing on, whereas in reality it is an old woman in mourning.

It is possible to give wedding presents, birthday presents, and Christmas presents without any thought or affection at all: they can be ordered by post card; but the unbirthday present demands the nicest care. It is therefore the best of all, and it is the only kind to which the golden rule of present-giving imperatively applies — the golden rule which insists that you must never give to another anything that you would not rather keep for ourself, nothing that does not cost you a pang to part from.

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

Human nature is rarely so amusing as when trying to get a house off its hands. Women at this task can be untruthful enough, but their untruth lacks the infusion of candour which a skilful male liar can introduce.

The trouble is that really wanting things is so rare. It's a lukewarm world!

The truth is the only thing worth having, and, in a civilized life, like ours, where so many risks are removed, facing it is almost the only courageous thing left to do.

Suzanne could not read a word, but the last atom of flavour was conserved in every dish that she sent to table; and what is literature compared with cooking? One is shadow and the other is substance.

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

Fixed customs must be surrendered, lateness must become punctuality, cigarette ends must not burn the mantelpiece, one misses one's own China tea. The bathroom is too far and other people use it. There is no hook for the strop. In short, to be a really good guest and at ease under alien roofs it is necessary, I suspect, to have no home ties of one's own ; certainly to have no very tyrannical habits.

I bade farewell to the May stars, and did one of the most adventurous things left to us — I went to bed. For no one can lay a hand on our dreams. All the authors of the world cannot spoil those.

The books that one reads in the impressionable years, and therefore absorbs and remembers, are always so much better and more exciting than life.

This is it: "There are two words for everything." Surely that is wisdom! The whole theory of party politics is in it, for one thing; and indeed all argument.

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.