F. L. Lucas Quotes

• 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.

  F. L. Lucas

  Atheism, Use, Panic

  F. L. Lucas (2015). “The Search for Good Sense: Four Eighteenth-Century Characters: Johnson, Chesterfield, Boswell and Goldsmith”, p.127, Bloomsbury Publishing

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

  F. L. Lucas

  Writing, People, Clarity

  F. L. Lucas (2012). “Style: The Art of Writing Well”, p.54, Harriman House Limited

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

  F. L. Lucas

  Long, Grace, Lasts

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• The simile sets two ideas side by side; in the metaphor they become superimposed.

  F. L. Lucas

  Ideas, Two, Sides

  F. L. Lucas (2012). “Style: The Art of Writing Well”, Harriman House Limited

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• Might was the measure of right.

  F. L. Lucas

  Might

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• Since in the long run deception is likely to be found out, your character had better not only seem good, but be it.

  F. L. Lucas

  Running, Honesty, Character

  F. L. Lucas (2012). “Style: The Art of Writing Well”, p.30, Harriman House Limited

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• It seems to me as natural and necessary to keep notes, however brief, of one's reading, as logs of voyages or photographs of one's travels. For memory, in most of us, is a liar with galloping consumption.

  F. L. Lucas

  Memories, Liars, Reading

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• This, indeed, is one of the eternal paradoxes of both life and literature-that without passion little gets done; yet, without control of that passion, its effects are largely ill or null.

  F. L. Lucas

  Passion, Null, Done

  F. L. Lucas (2012). “Style: The Art of Writing Well”, Harriman House Limited

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• 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.

  F. L. Lucas

  Mind, Lasts, Facts

  F. L. Lucas (2012). “Style: The Art of Writing Well”, p.17, Harriman House Limited

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• I have a wife, I have sons; all these hostages have I given to fortune.

  F. L. Lucas

  Son, Wife, Fortune

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• 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.

  F. L. Lucas

  Art, War, Tired

  F. L. Lucas (2015). “The Search for Good Sense: Four Eighteenth-Century Characters: Johnson, Chesterfield, Boswell and Goldsmith”, p.21, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• The more populous the world and the more intricate its structure, the greater must be its fundamental insecurity. A world-structure too elaborately scientific, if once disrupted by war, revolution, natural cataclysm or epidemic, might collapse into a chaos not easily rebuilt.

  F. L. Lucas

  War, Epidemics, Insecurity

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• Most style is not honest enough.

  F. L. Lucas

  Fake People, Style, Honest

  F. L. Lucas (2012). “How to Write Powerful Prose: An essay by the author of 'Style'”, p.10, Harriman House Limited

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• 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.

  F. L. Lucas

  Men, May, Tomorrow

  F. L. Lucas (2012). “Style: The Art of Writing Well”, p.322, Harriman House Limited

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

  F. L. Lucas

  Voice, Failing, Pulpit

  F L Lucas, (2013). “The Decline And Fall Of The Romantic Ideal”, p.167, Read Books Ltd

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• Great fear is concealed under daring.

  F. L. Lucas

  Fear, Overcoming, Daring

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• 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.

  F. L. Lucas

  Simple, Sound, Principles

  F. L. Lucas (2012). “Style: The Art of Writing Well”, p.229, Harriman House Limited

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