Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle Quotes

“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

“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

“. . . the world is a great leveller, and every year brings with it certain modifying influences. I like a man to be his age. Twenty-one is not an age I am very partial to: it is omniscient and exorbitant and cruel; but I like a youth of twenty-one none the less. Forty makes better company: when a man knows how little he knows, and how little life holds for him, and is yet unsubdued.”
― 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

“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

“I know nothing of grammar;
At school they never could hammer
Or beat it into my head.
The bare word made me stammer,
And turn pale as if I were dead.
But here I may as well be telling,
I'm often damned out in my spelling.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“He was born in 1770, in what he thought the best of all lands— Ireland; and he came home from the sea in 1802, but he did not take his pen 239 in hand until 1836, during which time his memory had purged itself of inessentials. He wrote them not for the cold eye of a publisher's reader but (like a gentleman) for his own family's entertainment.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“Have misfortune and disease and frustration and insecurity been necessary to man's ingenuity and industry? Without sorrow should we have had no telegraph? without tears, no camera? Have all the benefits of civilisation been wrung from us in some effort to escape from the blows of fate? And even if so, might not happiness, without the advantages of progress, have still been better?”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“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

“In France he would have been, I think, a sad bore, for there he would have discovered so many points of superiority to the English: but not even so keen a censor of his own country and countrymen as Mr. Dabney could find aught in Venice, except such forgivable and inimitable advantages as crumbling and picturesque architecture and clear skies, to hold up as a model for home adoption.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“Venice indeed imposes laziness. Even Americans doing Europe approach restful-ness there. There is no hurrying a gondolier.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“It came to me this morning all unexpectedly, being the payment of a debt which I had long since given up hope of ever receiving. In other words, it is sheer profit, like all repaid loans.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“It is when one reads counsels of something more than perfection— counsels of pedantic priggishness, shall we say— to natural, healthy children, that one realises how necessary compromise is to daily life and how far removed perfection is from the natural human being.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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. . .

"It is not the gentlemen," he went on, "that break a waiter's heart; it's the kitchen. That's where our trouble is. It's cooks that ruin eating-houses. A cook who has a grudge against a head-waiter can cost his governor pounds and pounds a day. It's all in his hands; he can spoil things, or he can keep them back till the customers bang out in a fury. . . . Gentlemen who blame waiters for being slow don't remember that the food has got to be cooked and served up, and that the waiter doesn't do either.

"But there;" Mr. Duckie said, "an empty stomach can't remember everything. I often think this would be a better-tempered and happier world if we ate a little all the time instead of saving up our appetites for real meals. But speaking as a waiter, I can see it's best as it is.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“After my experiences I know that it is not the disposal of books that presents the greatest difficulty to a bookseller, but the acquisition of them.”
― 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

“I had thought of a second-hand bookshop as being off the main stream of human frailty and temptation; and behold it was the resort of the most abandoned! Is there no natural honesty? I wished that Mr. Bemerton would return and liberate me to walk upstairs out of life again and get on with my make-believe.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“Apart from the necessity of replenishing his stock by attending sales and buying books; the wearing task of looking narrowly at larcenous fellow-creatures; the pangs that it must cost him to sell the books that he wants to keep; and the attacks made upon his tenderer feelings by unfortunate impoverished creatures with worthless books to sell; apart from these drawbacks, the life of a second-hand bookseller seems to me a happy one. I could myself lead it with considerable contentment.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“Well," I said, "I'm sorry if cheerfulness is so impracticable. It would be new, at any rate, and novelty is said to be a great thing."

"Not in songs," replied Alf. "They don't want anything new in songs except the tune. They've all got to be about the same things for ever and ever.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“It was a dull day for English readers (I think) when the description of the person was first considered unnecessary. We rarely get it now.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“for friends, in fact, belong to periods rather than to all time, although sentiment would have it otherwise. One is always changing a little, although of radical change there is almost none, and new friends are found in tune with each stage.”
― 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

“The time for second-hand book-shops," he said, "is after one's work, not during one's work.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“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

“What can become of book-hunting, he asks, if everything is reprinted in uniform binding for a shilling or sixpence?”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle

“Libraries, however, he does not much esteem. People should own their books, he holds; but that, of course, is a counsel of perfection, or would be were it not for the multitude of reprints that are now to be had at the price of a cigar.”
― Edward Verrall Lucas, Over Bemerton's, An Easy-Going Chronicle