Edward Verrall Lucas > Quotes

“I have noticed that the people who are late are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them.”
― E. V. Lucas

“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.”
― E. V. Lucas

“...of course, every cat is really the most beautiful woman in the room.”
― Edward V. Lucas

“One of the most adventurous things left us is to go to bed. For no one can lay a hand on our dreams.”
― E.V. Lucas

“I asked him how he kept his temper when customers were unreasonable. "Oh, that's all in the day's work," he said. "I know they don't mean it. It's not the gentlemen who are snappish, it's their empty stomachs. . . .”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“To-day well, my Utopia, if ever I framed one, would be a land where the laws demanded that people should be vicious. Then one would be able to count at any rate on a little virtue. If no man might live with a woman in any but an irregular union, there would be at once quite a run on honest matrimony and the Law Courts would be full of desperately wicked monogamists; while if every one was expected to steal and swindle, there would soon be an extensive criminal class who respected property.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, London Lavender

“What is it like in the air?” I once asked him.

“Ripping," he said.

“But the sensations?” I continued. “How do you feel?"

“Ripping," he said.

“And what does the world look like down below as you rush along?"

“Ripping," he said.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, London Lavender

“I never need to see any one twice to know them. My first impressions are always right. Sometimes I go back on my first impressions, but it is always a mistake to do so.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“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!”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, London Lavender

“What was that?" said Grandmamma, who is not really deaf, but when in a tight place likes to gain time by this harmless imposition.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“Into golf I cannot follow him; partly because I have never played, and partly because I like socialism in games, and the idea of employing a caddie will always be unpleasant to me.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“I see that the pigeon-holes of Fleet Street must be full of these anticipatory articles which only need occasional revision to date to be all ready when the scythe is finally sharpened. To meet an editor must be for a thoughtful celebrity as chilling as the spectacle of the mummy at the Egyptian banquet.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“So long as there are advertisements there cannot be absolutely free speech. It is not humanly possible.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“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”
― E.V. Lucas

“I could go on indefinitely thus, calling forth from their graves these hard-bitten sea dogs; but that is enough. It is literature in its way, is it not? Are there the same or kindred characters in the Navy to-day, one wonders. Let us hope so.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“What I always wonder about Dickens," he said, "is how on earth did the man correct his proofs?" Because, as he went on to point out, between the time of writing and the time of correcting he must have thought of so many new descriptive touches, so many new creatures to add, so many new and adorable fantastic comments on life. How could he deny himself the joy of putting these in?— for there can be no pleasure like that of creation.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“How can Nancy know her own mind when she has not got one? She is a dear, sweet girl, and I was devoted to her am devoted to her but she has no mind. It was I who was to give her that.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, London Lavender

“Unhappily in England just now, as I remarked to Mr. Dabney, thus incurring his most vitriolic agreement, the type of journalist who seems to have most readers is permitted to be the least sagacious and the least independent.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“A second-hand bookseller, I found, may read much in his time, but he cannot read continuously.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“The true Londoner cares no straw for sanitation. He thrives on ill conditions.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“Indeed, the crying need for the moment in this country, as in America, is a gospel of poverty to cope with the gospel of riches that is vitiating society.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas

“Do you think women ought to have the vote?" I asked him.

"My mother says," he replied, "that all the clever women have it already."

"Has she got it?" I asked.

He grinned. "I should rather say she had," he answered.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“None the less, the more I revolved the matter that evening the more did I wonder that affectionate parents can ever give their consent to their children's marriage at all. I can understand a father having no particular objection to his son's wife, and a mother to her daughter's husband; but how a father can ever even tolerate his daughter's husband or a mother the wife of her son, that is beyond my imagination.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“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.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“Not the least remarkable thing in this wonderful world in which we grope and have our being, is the amazing differences that can exist in the children of the same parents.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“Cynicism and self-esteem run through everything. Christian of course we never were, and never shall be, not even in adversity; but we are no longer in the least afraid of God.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“. . . his mind, I should say, with all its vigour and acumen, though naturally inclined to justice and courage, is about as capable of impartiality as a prize-fighter is capable of metaphysics.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“Bachelors have many advantages, but they are all minor. Perhaps the greatest advantage they enjoy is that of still being able to follow an impulse; but even this rarely seems to give them all the pleasure that it would give many a man who has tasted restriction. Feeding on impulses can become as distasteful as feeding on jam roll.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas

“It was almost impossible for a book to carry no association for that swooping, pouncing brain. He either knew it, or knew of it, or had always wanted to know it.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“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.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle