Source identified
“That you must master the secret for yourselves lay implicit in our bargain, and you were never promised that a writer's training would be easy.”
Learning to write is presented as demanding practice rather than a shortcut: difficulty belongs to the training and does not by itself signal failure.
Source note: On the Art of Writing, Lecture XII, “On Style,” Project Gutenberg #17470; excerpted from Quiller-Couch’s reminder that students must master craft for themselves.
Source identified
“I learned well because I never forgot it. And I learned. Did I not?”
Voice: Fictional character · Marco Loristan
Marco looks back on deliberate training and judges himself by whether he actually learned and retained what repeated instruction required.
Source note: The Lost Prince; Project Gutenberg #384. Marco says this while explaining that his father had long been preparing him for responsibility within the fictional plot.
Source identified
“To make each one many times was the best way to imbed it in his memory.”
Voice: Narrator voice · Narrator
The narration connects repeated practice with stronger recall, showing Marco deliberately using repetition to make a learned association more durable.
Source note: The Lost Prince; Project Gutenberg #384. The exercise involves repeatedly sketching faces connected with places for the novel’s secret mission.
Source identified
“I had to try myself at the same time, of course.”
Voice: Fictional character · Colin Craven
Colin explicitly adds his own effort to the encouragement he received, keeping agency and practice inside the novel’s language of 'Magic.'
Source note: The Secret Garden; Project Gutenberg #113. The sentence immediately follows Colin’s memory of being encouraged while attempting to stand; it remains fictional context, not rehabilitation guidance.
Source identified
“Literature is not a mere Science, to be studied; but an Art, to be practised.”
Quiller-Couch treats literature as an active craft: serious understanding should eventually lead beyond analysis into the disciplined practice of making language.
Source note: On the Art of Writing, Preface, Project Gutenberg #17470; the sentence states the central premise of the Cambridge lecture series.
Source identified
“It is well to observe everything and to train one's self to remember faces and circumstances.”
Voice: Fictional character · Loristan
Observation and memory are presented as trainable abilities strengthened by deliberate attention rather than fixed talents that either appear or do not.
Source note: The Lost Prince; Project Gutenberg #384. Loristan is training Marco for a fictional diplomatic and political mission, so the advice belongs to that narrative setting.