Top 100 Peter S. Beagle Quotes
#1. I was one of the haves, and one of the secrets of being a have is not wasting your time on empathy.
Peter S. Beagle
#3. A Clock is not time; it's numbers and springs. Pay it no mind.
Peter S. Beagle
#4. It's really not so good to have time. Rush, scramble, desperation, this missed, that left behind, those others too big to fit into such a small space
that's the way life was meant to be. You're supposed to be too late for some things. Don't worry about it.
Peter S. Beagle
#5. The magician stood erect, menacing the attackers with demons, metamorphoses, paralyzing ailments, and secret judo holds. Molly picked up a rock.
Peter S. Beagle
#6. The magician was studying her face with his green eyes. "Your face is wet," he said worriedly. "I hope that's spray. If you've become human enough to cry, then no magic in the world - oh, it must be spray. Come with me. It had better be spray.
Peter S. Beagle
#7. What do men know? Because they have seen no unicorns for a while does not mean we have all vanished.
Peter S. Beagle
#8. Farewell,' she said. 'I hope you hear many more songs' - which was the best way she could think of to say good-bye to a butterfly.
Peter S. Beagle
#10. In my village, one of our priests says that love between men is a great sin- the other argues that nothing at all is sinful except weak ale, overdone meat, and building a fire in any way but his.
Peter S. Beagle
#11. We are our own dragons and our own heroes. We must rescue ourselves from ourselves.
Peter S. Beagle
#12. If a man loved me, I would have talked myself into loving him, and I would have loved him very deeply after a while.
Peter S. Beagle
#13. There is only one spot in me that is as warm and placid as those cattle, and that is the part that knows quite surely that I will always be cold, that there will always be a wind hunting through me, and that I will always be hurrying before the coming darkness in search of a place that is not there.
Peter S. Beagle
#14. No sorrow will live in me as long as that joy
save one, and I thank you for that, too.
Peter S. Beagle
#15. Envy nobody. It is the true secret of happiness, or at least the only one I know. (By Moonlight)
Peter S. Beagle
#16. She is a story with no ending, happy or sad. She can never belong to anything mortal enough to want her. Most
Peter S. Beagle
#17. Only to a magician is the world forever fluid, infinitely mutable and eternally new. Only he knows the secret of change, only he knows truly that all things are crouched in eagerness to become something else, and it is from this universal tension that he draws his power.
Peter S. Beagle
#18. The baloney weighed the raven down, and the shopkeeper almost caught him as he whisked out the delicatessen door.
Peter S. Beagle
#19. The moon was gone, but to the magician's eyes the unicorn was the moon, cold and white and very old, lighting his way to safety, or to madness.
Peter S. Beagle
#20. Her face was a stranger's face, which was as it should be. Love each other from the day we are born to the day we die, we are still strangers every minute, and nobody should forget that, even though we have to.
Peter S. Beagle
#21. If there is one thing in this world that I was raised and trained to know, it is that there is only so much you may ask of the gods. Victory in battle is their lightest gift; a quiet heart is your own concern.
Peter S. Beagle
#22. I will kill you if you set me free,' the eyes said. 'Set me free.
Peter S. Beagle
#23. I like being brave well enough, but I will be a lazy coward again if you think that would be better.
Peter S. Beagle
#25. You think this is living? This is eating, nothing else.
Peter S. Beagle
#26. and even the feral, near-wild Third Cat, whose true name he had never discovered, as one has to do with cats, trailed
Peter S. Beagle
#28. If he had even blinked, she would have been gone; but he did not blink, and he held her, as he had learned to hold griffins and chimeras motionless with his steady gaze. Her bare feet wounded him deeper than any tusk or riving talon ever had, but he was a true hero.
Peter S. Beagle
#29. She was one woman who knew what to do with a slight moral edge. The
Peter S. Beagle
#30. There is no such thing as a cat - it is just a shape that all manner of imps, hobs, and devilkins like to put on, to gain easy entrance into the homes of men.
Peter S. Beagle
#31. He had never missed God or the hope of heaven, but he had dearly wanted confession to rest his mind, Communion to let him touch something beyond Father Krone's dry, shaky hand, and holy water to taste like starlight.
Peter S. Beagle
#32. Any woman can weep without tears," she answered over her shoulder, "and most can heal with their hands. It depends on the wound. She is a woman, Your Highness, and that's riddle enough
Peter S. Beagle
#33. - and you are truly human now. You can love, and fear, and forbid things to be what they are, and overact.
Peter S. Beagle
#34. It would be a crime to eat such a mouse!" he proclaimed everywhere. "An absolute, shameful, yummy crime.
Peter S. Beagle
#35. The tune was wailing and mournful, almost flagrantly so, and the total effect was of a heartbroken piccolo being parted forever from its bagpipe lover.
Peter S. Beagle
#36. When we go to the fair in disguise, we never win at archery or at singlestick. We do get some nice compliments on our disguises, but no more than that.
Peter S. Beagle
#37. O meal is good enough to justify all the money and effort wasted in preparing it. It is an illusion and an expense. Live as I do, undeceived.
Peter S. Beagle
#38. Nay, Cully, you have it backward," she called to him. "There's no such a person as you, or me, or any of us. Robin and Marian are real, and we are the legend!
Peter S. Beagle
#39. You have to be very deep to be dead, he thought, and I'm not. He began to have some concept of forever, and his mind shivered as his body had when he had wakened in the cold nights and thrust his hands between his thighs to keep warm. It will be a long night, he thought.
Peter S. Beagle
#40. She leaned forward and put her arms around me. Sometimes it used to make me prickly when she did that, and I'd turn into a bag of knees and elbows. . .
Peter S. Beagle
#41. I have been mortal, and some part of me is mortal yet. I am full of tears and hunger and the fear of death, although I cannot weep, and I want nothing, and I cannot die. I am not like the others now, for no unicorn was ever born who could regret, but I do. I regret.
Peter S. Beagle
#42. Oh, more people than not have some magic, they just forget about it. Children use it all the time - what do you think jump rope rhymes are, or bouncing ball games, or cat's cradles? Where do you think that girl, Aiffe, draws her power? Because she refuses to forget, that's all it is.
Peter S. Beagle
#43. If she had touched me," he said very softly, "I would have been hers and not my own, not ever again. I wanted her to touch me but I could not let her. No cat will. We let human beings caress us because it is pleasant enough and calms them - but not her. The price is more than a cat can pay.
Peter S. Beagle
#44. You ever want to see real witchcraft, you watch people protecting their comfort, their beliefs.
Peter S. Beagle
#45. Haggard, I would not be you for all the world," he declared. "You have let your doom in by the front door, although it will not depart that way. ( ... ) Farewell, poor Haggard, farewell!
Peter S. Beagle
#46. Anyone can say he's a magician these days. The old standards are gone, the old values have been abandoned. Besides, a real magician has a beard.
Peter S. Beagle
#47. The torches went out, and in the darkness, he placed his lips to my ear. I believe you because I choose to; not because I do.
Peter S. Beagle
#48. Her voice left a flavor of honey and gunpowder on the air.
Peter S. Beagle
#50. That's the true test of a town, or of a king. A lord who cheats an ugly old witch will cheat his own folk by and by. Stop him while you can, before you grow used to him.
Peter S. Beagle
#51. The unicorn had all the world in her eyes, all the world I'm never going to see, but it doesn't matter, because now I have seen it, and it's beautiful, and I was in there too.
Peter S. Beagle
#52. She was no longer the careless color of sea foam, but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night.
Peter S. Beagle
#53. I think love is stronger than habits or circumstances. I think it is possible to keep yourself for someone for a long time and still remember why you were waiting when she comes at last.
Peter S. Beagle
#54. The enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes. We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream. Still
Peter S. Beagle
#55. Death takes what man would keep," said the butterfly, "and leaves what man would lose. Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks. I warm my hands before the fire of life and get four-way relief.
Peter S. Beagle
#58. You were the one who taught me," he said. "I never looked at you without seeing the sweetness of the way the world goes together, or without sorrow for its spoiling. I became a hero to serve you, and all that is like you.
Peter S. Beagle
#59. I love whom I love," Prince Lir repeated firmly. "You have no power over anything that matters.
Peter S. Beagle
#60. They broaden our outlook ... set us to looking inward ...
Peter S. Beagle
#61. You may plant your acres again and raise up your fallen orchard and vineyards, but they will never flourish as they used to, never
until you learn to take joy in them, for no reason.
Peter S. Beagle
#62. He was the color of blood, not the springing blood of the heart but the blood that stirs under an old wound that never really healed. A terrible light poured from him like sweat, and his roar started landslides flowing into one another. His horns were pale as scars.
Peter S. Beagle
#63. Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.
Peter S. Beagle
#64. The unicorn halted in her slow, desperate round of the cage, realizing for the first time that the magician understood her speech. He smiled, and she saw that his face was frighteningly young for a grown man-untraveled by time, unvisited by grief or wisdom. "I know you," he said.
Peter S. Beagle
#65. Your topsoil's a disaster area - it's starved for nitrogen, it's been fertilized for years by the criminally insane, and whatever thief put in your irrigation system ought to be flogged through the fleet.
Peter S. Beagle
#66. But some, a very come to the gods all on their own They find their way - long and far it is, sometimes - and they wander up to the altars, shy and clumsy and embarrassed and alone, and when they can get the words out, they say, 'Well. Here I am
Peter S. Beagle
#68. Prodigies began to waken somewhere southwest of his twelfth rib, and he himself- still mirroring the Lady Amalthea- began to shine.
Peter S. Beagle
#69. There never is a happy ending because nothing ever ends.
Peter S. Beagle
#70. No cat out of its first fur can ever be deceived by appearances. Unlike human beings, who enjoy them.
Peter S. Beagle
#71. I am what I am. I would tell you what you want to know if I could, for you have been kind to me. But I am a cat, and no cat anywhere ever gave anyone a straight answer.
Peter S. Beagle
#72. Marveling at his own boldness, he said softly, I would enter your sleep if I could, and guard you there, and slay the thing that hounds you, as I would if it had the courage to face me in fair daylight. But I cannot come in unless you dream of me.
Peter S. Beagle
#73. You pile of stones, you waste, you desolation, I'll stuff you with misery till it comes out of your eyes. I'll change your heart into green grass, and all you love into a sheep. I'll turn you into a bad poet with dreams.
Peter S. Beagle
#74. Whatever can die is beautiful - more beautiful than a unicorn, who lives forever, and who is the most beautiful creature in the world. Do you understand me?
Peter S. Beagle
#75. And Hagsgate, alas, paid her no heed. She was treated politely and referred to the proper authorities, whereupon she flew into a fury and screamed that in our eagerness to make no enemies at all, we had now made two.
Peter S. Beagle
#76. If I danced with my feet As I dance in my dreaming, As graceful and gleaming As Death in disguise - Oh, that would be sweet, But then would I hunger To be ten years younger, Or wedded, or wise? The
Peter S. Beagle
#77. The universe lies to our senses and they lie to us, and how can we ourselves be anything but liars? For myself, I trust neither message nor messenger; neither what I am told, nor what I see. There may be truth somewhere, but it never gets down to me
Peter S. Beagle
#78. I've always thought cemeteries were like cities. There are streets, avenues - you've seen them, I think, Michael. There are blocks, too, and house numbers, slums and ghettos, middle-class sections and small palaces.
Peter S. Beagle
#79. What is plucked will grow again,
What is slain lives on,
What is stolen will remain
What is gone is gone.
Peter S. Beagle
#80. Girls like poems better than dead dragons and magic swords,
Peter S. Beagle
#81. Forget it, Jonathan, and go back to sleep. And before you go to sleep, pray that no well-meaning god ever makes you immortal.
Peter S. Beagle
#82. Unicorns know naught of shame, or need, or doubt, or debt;
But mortals, as you may have noticed, take what they can get.
Peter S. Beagle
#83. The most professional curse ever snarled or croaked or thundered can have no effect on a pure heart.
Peter S. Beagle
#84. That is most of it, being a wizard - seeing and listening.
Peter S. Beagle
#85. No," she said, answering his eyes. "I can never regret."[ ... ]"I can sorrow," she offered gently, "but it's not the same thing.
Peter S. Beagle
#86. When you walk, you make an echo where they used to be.
Peter S. Beagle
#87. I'm a magician with no magic, and that's no one at all.
Peter S. Beagle
#88. I always say perseverance is nine-tenths of any art - not that it's much help to be nine-tenths an artist, of course.
Peter S. Beagle
#89. You must never run from anything immortal. It attracts their attention. [ ... ] Never run. [ ... ] Walk slowly, and pretend to be thinking of something else. Sing a song, say a poem, do your tricks, but walk slowly and she may not follow.
Peter S. Beagle
#90. How terrible it would be if all my people had been turned human by well-meaning wizards - exiled,
Peter S. Beagle
#91. Why did they go away, do you think? If there ever were such things."
"Who knows? Times change. Would you call this age a good one for unicorns?"
"No, but I wonder if any man before us ever thought his time a good time for unicorns.
Peter S. Beagle
#92. I love you," Laura said hopelessly. "I'd love you if you were afraid of everything in the world.
Peter S. Beagle
#93. This creature is the Pooka. Pay no mind to the shape he wears, for he's none of his own, and no soul either. Ware him ever, trust him never, but when the wind's right he has his uses. Never forget that you will never know him. The Pooka's mystery even to the Pooka.
Peter S. Beagle
#94. The Cat: When the wine drinks itself, when the skull speaks, when the clock strikes the right time, only then will you find the tunnel that leads to the Red Bull. There be a trick to it, of course.
Peter S. Beagle
#95. I would enter your sleep if I could, and guard you there, and slay the thing that hounds you, as I would if it had the courage to face me in fair daylight. But I cannot come in unless you dream of me. Before
Peter S. Beagle
#96. This world, that world, doesn't matter. You never make people to see what you see, hear, feel what you feel. Notes don't do it, words don't do it, paints, bronze, marble, nothing. All you can do, you maybe get it a little close, a little closer. But right, like you're talking? No.
Peter S. Beagle
#98. She said, "I will go no farther."
"There is no choice. We can only go on." The magician said again. "We can only go on.
Peter S. Beagle
#99. Once you had your man, you let all your accomplishments go. You don't sew or sing any more, you haven't illuminated a manuscript in years - and
Peter S. Beagle
#100. As for you and your heart and the things you said and didn't say, she will remember them all when men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits.
Peter S. Beagle
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