Beatrix Potter Quotes

We cannot stay home all our lives, we must present ourselves to the world and we must look upon it as an adventure.

There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you.

What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood?

I have just made stories to please myself, because I never grew up.

With opportunity the world is very interesting.

Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.

All outward forms of religion are almost useless, and are the causes of endless strife. Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself and never mind the rest.

What we call the highest and the lowest in nature are both equally perfect. A willow bush is as beautiful as the human form divine.

Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were--Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter.

I do so hate finishing books. I would like to go on with them for years.

For quiet, solitary and observant children create their own world and live in it, nourishing their imaginations on the material at hand.

I cannot rest, I must draw, however poor the result, and when I have a bad time come over me it is a stronger desire than ever.

I hold that a strongly marked personality can influence descendants for generations.

I remember I used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when I was a child. What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and common-sense...

Sunday, January 27, 1884. -- There was another story in the paper a week or so since. A gentleman had a favourite cat whom he taught to sit at the dinner table where it behaved very well. He was in the habit of putting any scraps he left onto the cat's plate. One day puss did not take his place punctually, but presently appeared with two mice, one of which it placed on its master's plate, the other on its own.

Thank God I have the seeing eye, that is to say, as I lie in bed I can walk step by step on the fells and rough land seeing every stone and flower and patch of bog and cotton pass where my old legs will never take me again.

The place is changed now, and many familiar faces are gone, but the greatest change is myself. I was a child then, I had no idea what the world would be like. I wished to trust myself on the waters and the sea. Everything was romantic in my imagination. The woods were peopled by the mysterious good folk. The Lords and Ladies of the last century walked with me along the overgrown paths, and picked the old fashioned flowers among the box and rose hedges of the garden.

Most people, after one success, are so cringingly afraid of doing less well that they rub all the edge off their subsequent work.

So much perfection argues rottenness somewhere.

The shorter and the plainer the better.

I hold an old-fashioned notion that a happy marriage is the crown of a woman’s life.

Don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden: your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.

Here comes Peter Cottontail right down the bunny trail.

It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is 'soporific'.

In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets - when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta - there lived a tailor in Gloucester.