Top 74 E. Nesbit Quotes
#1. I never read prefaces, and it is not much good writing things just for people to skip. I wonder other authors have never thought of this.
E. Nesbit
#2. It's an odd thing- the softer and more easily hurt a woman is the better she can screw herself up to do what has to be done.
E. Nesbit
#3. And it's no use putting her on her honour, because - '
'Because she hasn't any,' Philip finished.
'I wouldn't say that,' said the parrot, 'of anybody. I'd only say we haven't come across it.
E. Nesbit
#4. I think magic went out when people began to have steam-engines, and newspapers, and telephones and wireless telegraphing.
E. Nesbit
#5. It is a curious thing that people only ask if you are enjoying yourself when you aren't.
E. Nesbit
#6. There was a pleasant party of barge people round the fire. You might not have thought it pleasant, but they did; for they were all friends or acquaintances, and they liked the same sort of things, and talked the same sort of talk. This is the real secret of pleasant society.
E. Nesbit
#7. I think everyone in the world is friends if you can only get them to see you don't want to be un-friends.
E. Nesbit
#8. There is a curtain, thin as gossamer, clear as glass, strong as iron, that hangs forever between the world of magic and the world that seems to us to be real.
E. Nesbit
#9. (The Gentle Reader may perhaps have suffered from this difficulty.)
E. Nesbit
#10. Time and space are only forms of thought.
E. Nesbit
#11. There is no bond like having read and liked the same books.
E. Nesbit
#12. People think six is a great many, when it's children ... they don't mind six pairs of boots, or six pounds of apples, or six oranges, especially in equations, but they seem to think that you ought not to have five brothers and sisters.
E. Nesbit
#13. Being editors is not the best way to wealth. We all feel this now, and highwaymen are not respected any more like they used to be.
E. Nesbit
#14. It is a moment, and it is eternity. It is the centre of the universe and it is the universe itself. The eternal light rests on and illuminates the eternal heart of things.
E. Nesbit
#15. Don't ask me no questions and I won't tell you no lies," the red-headed Ruth replied. "You'll know soon enough." Late
E. Nesbit
#16. I'll plant and water, sow and weed, Till not an inch of earth shows brown, And take a vow of each small seed To grow to greenness and renown: And then some day you'll pass my way, See gold and crimson, bell and star, And catch my garden's soul, and say: "How sweet these cottage gardens are!"
E. Nesbit
#17. And that, my dear children, is the moral of this chapter. I did not mean it to have a moral, but morals are nasty forward beings, and will keep putting in their oars where they are not wanted. And since the moral has crept in, quite against my wishes, you might as well think of it ...
E. Nesbit
#18. But what's the use of belonging anywhere if you're invisible?
E. Nesbit
#19. This shows you that even mistakes are sometimes valuable, so do not be hard on grown-up people if they are wrong sometimes.
E. Nesbit
#20. Out, out, into the night,
The belfry bells are ours by right!
E. Nesbit
#21. There are a thousand spears in my back,' said a little sharp voice, 'and they are all devoted to the Princess and to her alone.
E. Nesbit
#22. So you see it was all right in the end. But if one does that sort of thing, one has to be careful to do it in the right way. For, as Mr. Perks said, when he had time to think it over, it's not so much what you do, as what you mean.
E. Nesbit
#23. When the next Saturday came around everyone was a little nervous, but the Red Dragon was pretty quiet that day and only ate an Orphanage.
E. Nesbit
#25. Oh!" said Roberta, drawing a long breath; "it was like a great dragon tearing by. Did you feel it fan us with its hot wings?" "I suppose a dragon's lair might look very like that tunnel from the outside," said Phyllis.
E. Nesbit
#26. And where are you going?"
"I dunno," said the Spangled Boy. "I'm running from, not to."
Book: Wet Magic, Chapter 5.
E. Nesbit
#27. I don't understand," says Gerald, alone in his third- class carriage, "how railway trains and magic can go on at the same time."
And yet they do.
E. Nesbit
#28. It's not respectable,' she said.
And when people say that, it's no use
anyone's saying anything.
E. Nesbit
#29. There are brown eyes in the world, after all, as well as blue, and one pair of brown that meant heaven to me as the blue had never done
E. Nesbit
#30. You will think that they ought to have been very happy. And so they were, but they did not know HOW happy till the pretty life in the Red Villa was over and done with, and they had to live a very different life indeed. The
E. Nesbit
#31. If you're lucky enough to be different, don't you ever changed - Taylor Swift
E. Nesbit
#32. It is wonderful how quickly you get used to things, even the most astonishing.
E. Nesbit
#33. He said that his eyes were red because he had a cold.
E. Nesbit
#34. There is nothing more luxurious than eating while you read - unless it be reading while you eat. Amabel did both: they are not the same thing, as you will see if you think the matter over.
E. Nesbit
#35. A red, red rose, all wet with dew, With leaves of green by red shot through.
E. Nesbit
#36. Albert-next-door doesn't care for reading, and he has not read nearly so many books as we have, so he is very foolish and ignorant, but it cannot be helped ... Besides, it is wrong to be angry with people for not being so clever as you are yourself.
E. Nesbit
#37. Everything has an end, and you get to it if you only keep all on.
E. Nesbit
#38. It is all very wonderful and mysterious, as all life is apt to be if you go a little below the crust, and are not content just to read newspapers and go by the Tube Railway, and buy your clothes ready-made, and think nothing can be true unless it is uninteresting.
E. Nesbit
#39. I've not got much money, but I've got heaps of ideas.
E. Nesbit
#40. Gerald's look assured her that he and the others would be as near angels as children could be without ceasing to be human.
E. Nesbit
#41. Trying not to believe things when in your heart you are almost sure they are true, is as bad for the temper as anything I know.
E. Nesbit
#42. Yes, I know," Lionel interrupted. "Well, I shall read them all. I love to read. I am so glad I learned to read.
E. Nesbit
#43. (I am tired of calling Roberta by her name. I don't see why I should. No one else did. Everyone else called her Bobbie, and I don't see why I shouldn't.)
E. Nesbit
#44. The chestnut's proud, and the lilac's pretty, The poplar's gentle and tall, But the plane tree's kind to the poor dull city - I love him best of all.
E. Nesbit
#45. I'd like to marry a lady who had trances, and only woke up once or twice a year
E. Nesbit
#46. Life will give you what you ask of here if only you ask long enough and plainly enough.
E. Nesbit
#47. Ladylike is the beastliest word there is, I think. If a girl isn't a lady, it isn't worth while to be only like one, she'd better let it alone and be a free and happy bounder.
E. Nesbit
#48. Perhaps she did more than anyone else, for she slapped the King and put him to bed without his tea,
E. Nesbit
#49. Girls are just as clever as boys, and don't you forget it!
E. Nesbit
#50. Oh, Len, isn't she a darling? Just because she saw how our Bandboxful of furniture would rattle about in that big house like a peanut in a cocoanut shell, to lend us all hers! She is a darling.
E. Nesbit
#51. They didn't know being dead is only being asleep, and you're bound to wake up somewhere or other, either where you go to sleep or some better place.
E. Nesbit
#52. The rule of the giant's wife, a most worthy woman, whose only fault was that she was to ready to trust boys.
E. Nesbit
#53. The house was three miles from the station, but, before the dusty hired hack had rattled along for five minutes, the children began to put their heads out of the carriage window and say, "Aren't we nearly there?
E. Nesbit
#55. Perhaps there's given up being magic because people didn't believe in it any more.
E. Nesbit
#56. For really there is nothing like wings for getting you into trouble. But, on the other hand, if you are in trouble, there is nothing like wings for getting you out of it.
E. Nesbit
#57. Then suddenly Jack was a changed boy. Something wonderful had happened to him, and it had made him different. It sometimes happened to people that they see or hear something quite wonderful and then they are never altogether the same again.
E. Nesbit
#58. But it's raining cats and dogs,' said Jane.
E. Nesbit
#59. So he caught her in his arms and kissed her, and they were very happy, and told each other what a beautiful world it was, and how wonderful it was that they should have found each other, seeing that the world is not only beautiful but rather large.
E. Nesbit
#60. It wouldn't do to go mixing up the present and the past, and cutting bits out of one to fit into the other.
E. Nesbit
#61. Also she had the power of silent sympathy. That sounds rather dull, I know, but it's not so dull as it sounds. It just means that a person is able to know that you are unhappy, and to love you extra on that account, without bothering you by telling you all the time how sorry she is for you.
E. Nesbit
#62. If you say that the China Cat might have lost its ear-tips in battle you are the kind of person who always makes difficulties, and you may be quite sure that the kind of splendid magics that happened to Tavy will never happen to you.
E. Nesbit
#63. There are some days when you seem to have got to the end of all the things that could ever possibly happen to you, and you feel you will spend all the rest of your life doing dull things just the same way.
E. Nesbit
#64. Time is, as you are probably aware, merely a convenient fiction. There is no such thing as time.
E. Nesbit
#65. For London is like prison for children, especially if their relations are not rich.
E. Nesbit
#67. Robert rushed to the gravel-pit, found the Psammead, and presently wished for - But that, too, is another story.
E. Nesbit
#68. Oh, if I could choose," said Mabel, "of course I'd marry a brigand, and live in his mountain fastness, and be kind to his captives and help them to escape and-" "You'll be a real treasure to your husband." said Gerald.
E. Nesbit
#69. My Lamb, you are so very small, You have not learned to read at all; Yet never a printed book withstands The urgence of your dimpled hands. So, though this book is for yourself, Let mother keep it on the shelf Till you can read. O days that pass, That day will come too soon, alas!
E. Nesbit
#70. It is not, Dear, because I am alone, For I am lonelier when the rest are near, But that my place against your heart has grown Too dear to dream of when you are not here.
E. Nesbit
#71. Everyone felt as if it had been trying not to cry all its life,
E. Nesbit
#72. The Baby said, 'Wanty go walky'; and the fly stopped with a last rattle and jolt.
E. Nesbit
#73. I see. Certainly. It would be nice to put his name on the buns with pink sugar, wouldn't it?" "Perks," said Peter, "it's not a pretty name." "His other name's Albert," said Phyllis; "I asked him once." "We might put A. P.," said Mother; "I'll show you how when the day comes." This
E. Nesbit
#74. Besides, it is wrong to be angry with people for not being so clever as you are yourself. It is not always their faults.
E. Nesbit
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