James M. Barrie Quotes - Page 4

Wendy, Wendy, when you are sleeping in your silly bed you might be flying about with me saying funny things to the stars.

All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, ‘Oh, why can’t you remain like this for ever!’ This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.

Courage: The lovely virtue-the rib of Himself that God sent down to His children.

You find a glimmer of happiness in this world, there's always someone who wants to destroy it.

I know, I feel, that with the introduction of tobacco England woke up from a long sleep. Suddenly a new zest had been given to life. The glory of existence became a thing to speak of. Men who had hitherto only concerned themselves with the narrow things of home put a pipe into their mouths and became philosophers.

But the years came and went without bringing the careless boy; and when they met again Wendy was a married woman, and Peter was no more to her than a little dust in the box in which she had kept her toys.

Next year he did not come for her. She waited in a new frock because the old one simply would not meet, but he never came. "Perhaps he is ill," Michael said. "You know he is never ill." Michael came close to her and whispered, with a shiver, "Perhaps there is no such person, Wendy!" and then Wendy would have cried if Michael had not been crying.

I have always found that the man whose second thoughts are good is worth watching.

She liked his tears so much that she put out her beautiful finger and let them run over it. Her voice was so low that at first he could not make out what she said. Then he made it out. She was saying that she thought she could get well again if children believed in fairies.

When a new baby laughs for the first time a new fairy is born, and as there are always new babies there are always new fairies.

Wendy," Peter Pan continued in a voice that no woman has ever yet been able to resist, "Wendy, one girl is more use than twenty boys.

I do loathe explanations.

A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don't find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting.

May God blast anyone who writes a biography of me.

If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire.

To die will be an awfully big adventure.

For several days after my first book was published, I carried it about in my pocket and took surreptitious peeps at it to make sure the ink had not faded.

Do you know," Peter asked, "why swallows build in the eaves of houses? It is to listen to the stories.

For when you looked into my mother's eyes you knew, as if He had told you, why God sent her into the world - it was to open then minds of all who looked to beautiful thoughts. And that is the beginning and end of literature.

Ghosts were created when the first man awoke in the night.

There are, I dare say, many lovers who would never have been drawn to each other had they met for the first time, as, say, they met the second time.

astonishing splashes of colour

I like well to be in the company of explorers

Young boys should never be sent to bed. They always wake up a day older.

The gates of heaven are so easily found when we are little, and they are always standing open to let children wander in.