"A skill once acquired — for example, the power to speak and write and enjoy one’s own language, or another — is less easily lost, more quickly recovered, than mere accumulations of facts. And it seems to me more important to go out into life able to think straight and communicate clearly than even to know — and remember — the contents of every English book since Caedmon. Then, like Medea, even if you lose everything else, you can still feel 'Myself remains'. Whereas stuffed geese, even if stuffed with the Universe, remain geese."
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1. The Value of Style (p. 24)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/F._L._Lucas
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F. L. Lucas
Frank Laurence Lucas OBE (28 December 1894 – 1 June 1967) was an English classical scholar, literary critic, poet, novelist, playwright, polemicist, and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. He was also an intelligence officer at Bletchley Park during World War II.
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