Top 100 J M Barrie Quotes
#1. I was a huge J.M. Barrie fan as a kid, as most English children are.
Tim Curry
#2. Lewis Carroll and J. M. Barrie were very strange men, and such is the nature of the written word that their personal strangeness shines straight through all the layers of Disneyfication like X-rays through a wall. Probably
Neal Stephenson
#3. J.M. Barrie was right; it is an awfully big adventure!
Paul James
#4. Back in the 1950s and '60s, J. M. Barrie's 'Peter Pan' - starring Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard - was regularly aired on network television during the Christmas season. I must have seen it four or five times and remember, in particular, Ritchard's gloriously camp interpretation of Captain Hook.
Michael Dirda
#5. If he thought at all, but I don't believe he ever thought, it was that he and his shadow, when brought near each other, would join like drops of water ...
J.M. Barrie
#6. The most haunting time at which to see them is at the turn of the moon, when they utter strange wailing cries; but the lagoon is dangerous for mortals
J.M. Barrie
#7. Don't forget to speak scornfully of the Victorian Age; there will be time for meekness when you try to better it. Very soon you will be Victorian or that sort of thing yourselves; next session probably, when the freshman come up.
J.M. Barrie
#8. I don't want to go to school and learn solemn things.
J.M. Barrie
#9. It is glorious fun racing down the Hump, but you can't do it on windy days because then you are not there, but the fallen leaves do it instead of you. There is almost nothing that has such a keen sense of fun as a fallen leaf.
J.M. Barrie
#10. Why, what is the matter, father dear?' 'Matter!' he yelled; he really yelled. 'This tie, it will not tie.
J.M. Barrie
#11. To reveal who he really was would even at this date set the country in a blaze.
J.M. Barrie
#12. 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.
J.M. Barrie
#13. There could not have been a lovelier sight; but there was none to see it except a little boy who was staring in at the window. He had ecstasies innumerable that other children can never know; but he was looking through the window at the one joy from which he must be for ever barred.
J.M. Barrie
#14. She says she glories in being abandoned
J.M. Barrie
#15. Second to the right,' said Peter, 'and then straight on till morning.' 'What
J.M. Barrie
#18. I can give you the power to fly to her house," the Queen said, "but I can't open the door for you.
J.M. Barrie
#19. The difference between him and the other boys at such a time was that they knew it was make-believe, while to hime make-believe and true were exactly the same thing. This sometimes troubled them, as when they had to make-believe that they had had their dinners.
J.M. Barrie
#20. If you wish it.
Slightly: If you wish it?
Peter: IF YOU WISH IT.
J.M. Barrie
#22. What is afraid?' asked Peter longingly. He thought it must be some splendid thing. 'I do wish you would teach me how to be afraid, Maimie,' he said.
J.M. Barrie
#23. Yo ho, yo ho, the pirate life, The flag o' skull and bones, A merry hour, a hempen rope, And hey for Davy Jones.' At
J.M. Barrie
#24. David tells me that fairies never say 'We feel happy': what they say is, 'We feel dancey'.
J.M. Barrie
#25. There is a saying in the Neverland that,every time you breathe, a grown-up dies.
J.M. Barrie
#26. When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.
J.M. Barrie
#27. All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.
J.M. Barrie
#28. Most disquieting reflection of all, was it not bad form to think about good form?
J.M. Barrie
#29. 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.
J.M. Barrie
#30. Even though you want to try to, never grow up
J.M. Barrie
#31. Do you believe in fairies? ... If you believe, clap your hands!
J.M. Barrie
#32. For, to a child, the oddest of things, and the most richly coloured picture-book, is that his mother was once a child also.
J.M. Barrie
#33. 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.
J.M. Barrie
#34. James Hook, thou not wholly unheroic figure, farewell. For we have come to his last moment.
J.M. Barrie
#35. Would you like an adventure now, or would like to have your tea first?
J.M. Barrie
#37. You expected too much of me' I told him, and he bowed his head. 'I don't know where you brought your grand ideas of men and women from. I don't want to know' I added hastily. But I must have been a prettier word that this' I said: 'are you quite sure that you were wise in leaving it?
J.M. Barrie
#38. Peter invented, with Wendy's help, a new game that fascinated him enormously, until he suddenly had no more interest in it, which, as you have been told, was what always happened with his games. It consisted in pretending not to have adventures ...
J.M. Barrie
#39. We are all failures- at least the best of us are.
J.M. Barrie
#40. You just think lovely wonderful thoughts," Peter explained, "and they lift you up in the air.
J.M. Barrie
#41. Peter measures you for your tree as carefully as for a suit of clothes: the only difference being that the clothes are made to fit you, while you have to be made to fit the tree.
J.M. Barrie
#42. You are too late," he cried proudly, "I have shot the Wendy. Peter will be so pleased with me."
Overhead Tinker Bell shouted "Silly ass!" and darted into hiding.
J.M. Barrie
#43. I wasn't crying about mothers," he said rather indignantly. "I was crying because I can't get my shadow to stick on. Besides, I wasn't crying.
J.M. Barrie
#44. 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.
J.M. Barrie
#45. It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for the next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day.
J.M. Barrie
#46. I remember kisses," said Slightly. "Let me see. Aye, that is a kiss. A powerful thing.
J.M. Barrie
#48. A strange smile was playing about his face, and Wendy saw it and shuddered. While that smile was on his face no one dared address him; all they could do was to stand ready to obey.
J.M. Barrie
#49. but I dared not tell him my suspicions, for he suspected also and his gentle heart would have mourned had I confirmed his fears. The
J.M. Barrie
#50. One could mention many lovable traits in Smee. For instance, after killing, it was his spectacles he wiped instead of his weapon.
J.M. Barrie
#51. He was a little boy, and she was grown up. She huddled by the fire not daring to move, helpless and guilty, a big woman.
J.M. Barrie
#53. Nobody really wants us. So let us watch and say jaggy things, in the hope that some of them will hurt.
J.M. Barrie
#54. Thus, when you cry out, 'Greedy! Greedy!' to the bird that flies
away with the big crust, you know now that you ought not to do this, for he is very likely taking it to Peter
Pan.
J.M. Barrie
#55. The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one does.
J.M. Barrie
#56. Some disquieting confessions must be made in printing at last the play of Peter Pan; among them this, that I have no recollection of having written it.
J.M. Barrie
#57. It is frightfully difficult to know much about the fairies, and almost the only thing for certain is that there are fairies wherever there are children.
J.M. Barrie
#58. But he has still a vague memory that he was a human once,
J.M. Barrie
#59. Take care, lest an adventure is now offered you, which, if accepted, will plunge you in deepest woe.
J.M. Barrie
#60. All remember about my mother," Nibs told them, "is that she often said to my father, 'Oh, how I wish I had a cheque-book of my own!' I don't know what a cheque-book is, but I should just love to give my mother one.
J.M. Barrie
#61. I suppose it's like the ticking crocodile, isn't it? Time is chasing after all of us.
J.M. Barrie
#63. He swore this terrible oath: Hook or me this time.
J.M. Barrie
#64. Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes.
[The Rectorial Address Delivered by James M. Barrie at St. Andrew's University May 3, 1922, to the Red Gowns of St. Andrews, Canada, 1922]
J.M. Barrie
#65. You know that place between sleep and awake, that place where you still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always love you. That's where I'll be waiting.
J.M. Barrie
#66. 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.
J.M. Barrie
#67. When you were a bird you knew the fairies pretty well, and you remember a good deal about them in your babyhood, which it is a great pity you can't write down, for gradually you forget, and I have heard of children who declared that they had never once seen a fairy.
J.M. Barrie
#68. 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.
J.M. Barrie
#69. Forget them, Wendy. Forget them all. Come with me where you'll never, never have to worry about grown up things again.
Never is an awfully long time.
J.M. Barrie
#70. They were his dogs snapping at him, but, tragic figure though he had become, he scarcely heeded them. Against such fearful evidence it was not their belief in him that he needed, it was his own. He felt his ego slipping from him.
J.M. Barrie
#71. To live would be an awfully big adventure.
J.M. Barrie
#73. Yes, it is a dull beginning. I say, let us pretend that it is the end.
J.M. Barrie
#74. Don't cry, pretty human, don't cry," and then she turned round and saw a beautiful little naked boy regarding her wistfully. She knew at once that he must be Peter Pan.
J.M. Barrie
#75. Stars are beautiful, but they may not take part in anything, they must just look on forever.
J.M. Barrie
#76. Hook was not his true name. To reveal who he really was would even at this date set the country in a blaze; but as those who read between the lines must already have guessed,
J.M. Barrie
#77. for things go briskly on the island, come the pirates on their track. We hear them before they are seen, and it is always the same dreadful song: 'Avast belay, yo ho, heave to, A-pirating we go, And if we're parted by a shot We're sure to meet below!' A
J.M. Barrie
#78. Even by day they hung about, smoking the pipe of peace, and looking almost as if they wanted tit-bits to eat. They
J.M. Barrie
#79. To die will be an awfully big adventure.
J.M. Barrie
#80. He was so fond of her, he felt he could not live without her. "She will forget her mother in time, and be happy with me," he kept saying to himself,
J.M. Barrie
#81. Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.
J.M. Barrie
#82. The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply because they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.
J.M. Barrie
#83. It was the work of one brutal moment to land the beautiful girl on the rock; she was too proud to offer a vain resistance.
J.M. Barrie
#84. Certainly they did not pretend to be sleepy, they were sleepy; and that was a danger, for the moment they popped off, down they fell. The awful thing was that Peter found this funny. "There he goes again!" he would cry gleefully as Michael suddenly dropped like a stone.
J.M. Barrie
#85. If you cannot teach me to fly, teach me to sing.
J.M. Barrie
#87. Hook always carried about his person a dreadful drug, blended by himself of all the death-dealing rings that had come into his possession. These he had boiled down into a yellow liquid quite unknown to science, which was probably the most virulent poison in existence. Five
J.M. Barrie
#89. Odds bobs, hammer and tongs I'm burning.
J.M. Barrie
#90. See," he said, "the arrow struck against this. It is the kiss I gave her. It has saved her life.
J.M. Barrie
#91. Thus did the terrified three learn the difference between an island of make-believe and the same island come true.
J.M. Barrie
#92. Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always try to be a little kinder than is necessary?
J.M. Barrie
#93. Growing up is simply getting old. Growing up is when you don't believe anymore
J.M. Barrie
#94. 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.
J.M. Barrie
#95. He decided to appeal to the fairies for enlightenment. They are reputed
to know a good deal.
J.M. Barrie
#96. i know i'm not clever but i'm always right.
J.M. Barrie
#97. Mrs. Darling stretched out her arms to him, but he repulsed her. Keep back, lady, no one is going to catch me and make me a man.
J.M. Barrie
#99. Children have the strangest adventures without being troubled by them. For instance, they may remember to mention, a week after the event happened, that when they were in the wood they had met their dead father and had a game with him.
J.M. Barrie
#100. The pirates, listening avidly at the mouths of the trees, heard the question put by every boy, and alas, they also heard Peter's answer.
J.M. Barrie
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