James M. Barrie Quotes - Page 8

All children, except one, grow up.

On these magic shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.

Can anything harm us, mother, after the night-lights are lit?" Nothing, precious," she said; "they are the eyes a mother leaves behind her to guard her children.

Every living thing was shunning him. Poor little Peter Pan, he sat down and cried, and even then he did not know that, for a bird, he was sitting on his wrong part. It is a blessing that he did not know, for otherwise he would have lost faith in his power to fly, and the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it. The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.

The door', replied Maimie, 'will always, always be open, and mother will always be waiting at it for me.

She adored all beautiful things in their every curve and fragrance, so that they became part of her. Day by day, she gathered beauty; had she had no heart (she who was the bosom of womanhood) her thoughts would still have been as lilies, because the good is the beautiful.

Second to the right, and straight on till morning.' That, Peter had told Wendy, was the way to the Neverland; but even birds, carrying maps and consulting them at windy corners, could not have sighted it with these instructions. Peter, you see, just said anything that came into his head.

Has it ever struck you that trout bite best on the Sabbath? God's critters tempting decent men.

And if he forgets them so quickly," Wendy argued, "how can we expect that he will go on remembering us?

They hold their great balls in the open air, in what is called a fairy-ring. For weeks afterward you can see the ring on the grass. It is not there when they begin, but they make it by waltzing round and round. Sometimes you will find mushrooms inside the ring, and these are fairy chairs that the servants have forgotten to clear away. The chairs and the rings are the only tell-tale marks these little people leave behind them, and they would remove even these were they not so fond of dancing that they toe it till the very moment of the opening of the gates.

You canna expect to be baith grand and comfortable.

They have long lost count of the days, but always if they want to do anything special they say this is saturday night, and then they do it.

I've sometimes thought . . . that the difference between us and the English is that the Scotch are hard in all other respects but soft with women, and the English are hard with women but soft in all other respects.

Some of my plays peter out and some pan out.

If 'Hamlet' had been written in these days it would probably have been called 'The Strange Affair at Elsinore.

Life is a cup of tea; the more heartily we drink the sooner we reach the dregs.

I sometimes think, Mary, that it is a mistake to have a dog for a nurse.

In dinner talk it is perhaps allowable to fling any faggot rather than let the fire go out.

I don’t want to go to school and learn solemn things. I don’t want to be a man.

Peter was not with them for the moment, and they felt rather lonely up there by themselves. He could go so much faster than they that he would suddenly shoot out of sight, to have some adventure in which they had no share. He would come down laughing over something fearfully funny he had been saying to a star, but he had already forgotten what it was, or he would come up with mermaid scales still sticking to him, and yet not be able to to say for certain what had been happening. It was really rather irritating to children who had never seen a mermaid.

That is ever the way. Tis all jealousy to the bride and good wishes to the corpse.

Of all the delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. When you play at it by day with the chairs and table-cloth, it is not in the least alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very nearly real. That is why there are night-lights.

Because you see 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. They live in nests on the tops of trees; and the mauve ones are boys and the white ones are girls, and the blue ones are just little sillies who are not sure what they are.

They were going round and round the island, but they did not meet because all were going at the same rate.

A moment after the fairy's entrance the window was blown open by the breathing of the little stars, and Peter dropped in.