E. V. Lucas's Quotes

One of the most adventurous things left us is to go to bed. For no one can lay a hand on our dreams.

Nothing is so boring as having to keep up a deception.

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

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

Nothing is wasted.

The art of life is to show your hand.

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

There are two words for everything.

There can be no defence like elaborate courtesy.

There is no diplomacy like candor.

You may lose by it now and then, but it will be a loss well gained if you do.

And how is clarity to be achieved? Mainly by taking trouble and by writing to serve people rather than to impress them.

The most emphatic place in a clause or sentence is the end. This is the climax; and, during the momentary pause that follows, that last word continues, as it were, to reverberate in the reader's mind. It has, in fact, the last word.

A man can make himself put down what comes, even if it seems nauseating nonsense; tomorrow some of it may not seem wholly nonsense at all.

At Munich we sold the Czechs for a few months grace, but the disgrace will last as long as history.

Most style is not honest enough.

Poetry had far better imply things than preach them directly... in the open pulpit her voice grows hoarse and fails.

The only hope I can see for the future depends on a wiser and braver use of the reason, not a panic flight from it.

Apart from a few simple principles, the sound and rhythm of English prose seem to me matters where both writers and readers should trust not so much to rules as to their ears.

The two World Wars came in part, like much modern literature and art, because men, whose nature is to tire of everything in turn... tired of common sense and civilization.

I actually spend very little time listening to any new music.

To make the bloody thing talk the way I do when I'm on a verbal roll, in my idioms and rhythms.

I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here.