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 courageo… - E. V. Lucas

He was born in 1770, in what he thought the best of all lands— Ireland; and he came home from the sea in 1802, but he did not take his pen in hand until 1836, during which time his memory had purged itself of inessentials. He wrote them not for the cold eye of a publisher's reader but (like a gentleman) for his own family's entertainment.

One of the most serious thoughts that life provokes is the reflection that we can never tell, at the time, whether a word, a look, a touch, an occurrence of any kind, is trivial or important.

Unhappily in England just now,...the type of journalist who seems to have most readers is permitted to be the least sagacious and the least independent.