E. V. LUCAS

There can be no defence like elaborate courtesy.

Nothing is wasted.

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

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

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

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

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.

The art of life is to show your hand.

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

There are two words for everything.

I am a believer in punctuality though it makes me very lonely

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

In betting on races, there are two elements that are never lacking - hope as hope, and an incomplete recollection of the past.

A genius is a man who does unique things of which nobody would expect him to be capable.

What kind of life a dog . . . acquires. I have sometimes tried to imagine by kneeling or lying full length on the ground and looking up. The world then becomes strangely incomplete; one sees little but legs.

Few women and fewer men have enough character to be idle.

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.

Readers of novels are a strange folk, upon whose probable or even possible tastes no wise book-maker would ever venture to bet.

The noise from good toast should reverberate in the head like the thunder of July.

What is literature compared with cooking? The one is shadow, the other is substance.

Suspicion of happiness is in our blood.

Women who make men talk better than they are accustomed to are always popular.

The art of life is to show your hand. 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. Nothing is so boring as having to keep up a deception.

The trouble with marriage is that, while every woman is at heart a mother, every man is at heart a bachelor.