E. V. Lucas

"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."

E. V. Lucas

"I hate to be reminded of the passage of time, and in a garden of flowers one can never escape from it. It is one of the charms of a garden of grass and evergreens, that there for a while one is allowed to hug the illusion that time tarries."

E. V. Lucas

"I don't want to give it to you, so please take it quickly and hide it, or I shall ask for it back. It is a very sordid feeling, I admit; but if you also had the collector's temperament you would know that to give away anything is nearly an impossibility, and to give away anything without regretting it is quite an impossibility."

E. V. Lucas

"There are moments when one is more ashamed of what is called culture than any one can ever be of ignorance."

E. V. Lucas

"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."

E. V. Lucas

"I will admit to feeling exceedingly proud when any cat has singled me out for notice; for, of course, every cat is really the most beautiful woman in the room. That is part of their deadly fascination."

E. V. Lucas

"The mere fact of never having a holiday is not in itself distressing. Holidays often are overrated disturbances of routine, costly and uncomfortable, and they usually need another holiday to correct their ravages."

E. V. Lucas

"The special quality of the act of finding something, with its consequent exhilaration, is half unexpectedness and half separateness. There being no warning, and the article coming to you by chance, no one is to be thanked, no one to be owed anything. In short, you have achieved the greatest human triumph — you have got something for nothing."

E. V. Lucas

"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."

E. V. Lucas

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

E. V. Lucas

"In England it is a very dangerous handicap to have a sense of humour; and Whistler's levity had always stood in his way."

E. V. Lucas

"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."

E. V. Lucas

"There can be no defence like elaborate courtesy."

E. V. Lucas

"Poor G.K.C., his day is past— Now God will know the truth at last."

E. V. Lucas

"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."

E. V. Lucas

"To Naomi's serene, sane mind the world has to be accepted as it is, and therefore she is always the same. Not that she considers everything perfect, but she has an instinctive realisation of the inevitability of imperfection which keeps her contented — or at any rate prevents querulous discontent."

E. V. Lucas

"I have come to the conclusion that the golfing temperament is essentially aristocratic— a feudal inheritance — the property exclusively of those who can see nothing absurd or even degrading in the spectacle of powerful frivolous men being followed by boys of burden."

E. V. Lucas

"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."

E. V. Lucas

"The true Londoner cares no straw for sanitation. He thrives on ill conditions."

E. V. Lucas

"It was Henri Taine, I think, who said that there was no volume he could not compress into a chapter, and no chapter that would not go into a sentence. Dr. Giles has carried out Taine's thrasonical brag. There is no Chinese lifetime, however crowded and illustrious, that he cannot pack into a paragraph or a page."

E. V. Lucas

"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."

E. V. Lucas

"His mind...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."

E. V. Lucas

"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."

E. V. Lucas

"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."

E. V. Lucas

"So long as there are advertisements there cannot be absolutely free speech. It is not humanly possible."

E. V. Lucas