Quotes By F. L. Lucas

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.

Most style is not honest enough.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.