James M. Barrie Quotes

I taught you to fight and to fly. What more could there be?

And so when Mrs. Darling went back to the night-nursery to see if her husband was asleep, all the beds were occupied. The children waited for her cry of joy, but it did not come. She saw them, but she did not believe they were there. You see, she saw them in their beds so often in her dreams that she thought this was just the dream hanging around her still.

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.

Our life is a book to which we add daily, until suddenly we are finished, and then the manuscript is burned.

In time they could not even fly after their hats. Want of practice, they called it; but what it really meant was that they no longer believed.

You won't forget me, Peter, will you, before spring-cleaning time comes? Of course Peter promised, and then he flew away. He took Mrs. Darling's kiss with him. The kiss that had been for no one else Peter took quite easily. Funny. But she seemd satisfied.

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

For long the two enemies looked at one another, Hook shuddering slightly, and Peter with the strange smile upon his face. "So, Pan," said Hook at last, "this is all your doing." "Ay, James Hook," came the stern answer, "it is all my doing." "Proud and insolent youth," said Hook, "prepare to meet thy doom." "Dark and sinister man,“For long the two enemies looked at one another, Hook shuddering slightly, and Peter with the strange smile upon his face. "Dark and sinister man," Peter answered, "have at thee.

You need not be sorry for her. She was one of the kind that likes to grow up. In the end she grew up of her own free will a day quicker than the other girls.

She was a large woman who seemed not so much dressed as upholstered.

The man who is in real danger is the man who thinks he is perfectly safe.

Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.

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

David tells me that fairies never say 'We feel happy': what they say is, 'We feel dancey'.

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.

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.

In love-making, as in other arts, those who do it best cannot tell how it is done.

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

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

His lordship may compel us to be equal upstairs, but there will never be equality in the servants' hall.

Make your feet your friend.

A loving wife is better than making 50 in cricket, or even 99, beyond that I will not go.

Don't have a mother,' he said. Not only had he no mother, but he had not the slightest desire to have one. He thought them very over-rated persons.

Boy, why are you crying?

I think one remains the same person throughout, merely passing, as it were, i these lapses of time from one room to another, but all in the same house.

Dreams do come true, if we only wish hard enough.

You canna expect to be baith grand and comfortable.

In England, justice is open to all - like the Ritz Hotel.

Will they reach the nursery in time? If so, how delightful for them, and we shall all breathe a sigh of relief, but there will be no story. On the other hand, if they are not in time, I solemnly promise that it will all come right in the end.

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.

But where do you live mostly now?" With the lost boys." Who are they?" They are the children who fall out of their perambulators when the nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven days they are sent far away to the Neverland to defray expanses. I'm captain." What fun it must be!" Yes," said cunning Peter, "but we are rather lonely. You see we have no female companionship." Are none of the others girls?" Oh no; girls, you know, are much too clever to fall out of their prams.

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.

We should be slower to think that the man at his worst is the real man, and certain that the better we are ourselves the less likely is he to be at his worst in our company. Every time he talks away his own character before us he is signifying contempt for ours.

I should like to say that I left off smoking because I considered it a mean form of slavery, to be condemned for moral as well as physical reasons; but though I see the folly of smoking clearly now, I was blind to it for some months after I had smoked my last pipe. I gave up my most delightful solace, as I regarded it, for no other reason than that the lady who was willing to fling herself away on me said that I must choose between it and her.

Mr. and Mrs. Darling and Nana rushed into the nursery too late. The birds were flown

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.

Oh the gladness of their gladness when they're glad, And the sadness of their sadness when they're sad; But the gladness of their gladness, and the sadness of their sadness, Are as nothing to their badness when they're bad

Some day,' said Smee, 'the clock will run down, and then he'll get you.' Hook wetted his dry lips, 'Aye,' he said, 'that's the fear that haunts me.

Growing up is such a barbarous business, full of inconvenience... and pimples.

Pan, who and what art thou?" he cried huskily. "I'm youth, I'm joy," Peter answered at a venture, "I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg.

Your heart is as fresh as your face; and that is well. The useless men are those who never change with the years. Many views that I held to in my youth and long afterwards are a pain to me now, and I am carrying away from Thrums memories of errors into which I fell at every stage of my ministry. When you are older you will know that life is a long lesson in humility.

God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.

After a time he fell asleep, and some unsteady fairies had to climb over him on their way home from an orgy.

Those who aim low usually hit their targets.

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.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder… or forgetful.

Next moment he was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, "To die will be an awfully big adventure.

Tink was not all bad: or, rather, she was all bad just now, but, on the other hand, sometimes she was all good. Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time. They are, however, allowed to change, only it must be a complete change.