James M Barrie Quotes

#1. 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

#2. The gates of heaven are so easily found when we are little, and they are always standing open to let children wander in.

James M. Barrie

#3. Forget not your past, for in the future it may help you grow

James M. Barrie

#4. The Elizabethan age might be better named the beginning of the smoking era..

James M. Barrie

#5. We are all failures at least, all the best of us are.

James M. Barrie

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

James M. Barrie

#7. Strength instead of being the lusty child of passion, grows by grappling with and subduing them.

James M. Barrie

#8. It's a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have.

James M. Barrie

#9. I'm youth, I'm joy, I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg.

James M. Barrie

#10. 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.

James M. Barrie

#11. Odd things happen to all of us on our way through life without our noticing for a time that they have happened.

James M. Barrie

#12. You [Scots] come of a race of men the very wind of whose name has swept to the ultimate seas.

James M. Barrie

#13. The best place a person can die, is where they die for others.

James M. Barrie

#14. He who distributes the milk of human kindness cannot help but spill a little on himself.

James M. Barrie

#15. Courage: The lovely virtue-the rib of Himself that God sent down to His children.

James M. Barrie

#16. A house is never still in darkness to those who listen intently; there is a whispering in distant chambers, an unearthly hand presses the snib of the window, the latch rises. Ghosts were created when the first man awoke in the night.

James M. Barrie

#17. 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

James M. Barrie

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

James M. Barrie

#19. How shall we ever know if it's morning if there's no servant to pull up the blinds?

James M. Barrie

#20. One girl is worth more use than 20 boys.

James M. Barrie

#21. For to have faith, is to have wings Peter Pan

James M. Barrie

#22. The praise that comes from love does not make us vain, but more humble.

James M. Barrie

#23. If I were younger, I'd know more.

James M. Barrie

#24. Wendy: Sir, you are both ungallant and deficient! Peter: How am I deficient? Wendy: You're just a boy.

James M. Barrie

#25. As soon as you can say what you think and not what some other person has thought for you, you are on the way to being a remarkable man.

James M. Barrie

#26. We have a right to know the truth; no right to ask anything else from God, but the right to know that.

James M. Barrie

#27. Heaven for climate, Hell for company.

James M. Barrie

#28. There are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make.

James M. Barrie

#29. Always try to be a litle kinder than necessary.

James M. Barrie

#30. Oh, God, if I were sure I were to die tonight I would repent at once. It is the commonest prayer in all languages.

James M. Barrie

#31. I have always found that the man whose second thoughts are good is worth watching.

James M. Barrie

#32. The praise that comes of love does not make us vain, but humble rather. Knowing what we are, the pride that shines in our mother's eyes as she looks at us is about the most pathetic thing a man has to face, but he would be a devil altogether if it did not burn some of the sin out of him.

James M. Barrie

#33. 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.

James M. Barrie

#34. Everytime a child says 'I don't believe in fairies' there is a a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead.

James M. Barrie

#35. The man of science appears to be the only man who has something to say just now, and the only man who does not know how to say it.

James M. Barrie

#36. 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.

James M. Barrie

#37. Do you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe. If you believe, clap your hands!

James M. Barrie

#38. What a polite game tennis is. The chief word in it seems to be "sorry" and admiration of each other's play crosses the net as frequently as the ball.

James M. Barrie

#39. I do loathe explanations.

James M. Barrie

#40. Have you noticed that many jewels make women either incredibly fat or incredibly thin?

James M. Barrie

#41. You were hidden behind walls of ice; no man had passed them; I broke them down and love leapt to love, and you lie here, my beautiful, love in the arms of its lover.

James M. Barrie

#42. Always be kinder than necessary.

James M. Barrie

#43. May God blast anyone who writes a biography of me.

James M. Barrie

#44. Wise children always choose a mother who was a shocking flirt in her maiden days, and so had several offers before she accepted their fortunate papa.

James M. Barrie

#45. Those who aim low usually hit their targets.

James M. Barrie

#46. If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!

James M. Barrie

#47. I bowl so slowly that if I don't like a ball I can run after it and bring it back

James M. Barrie

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

James M. Barrie

#49. We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of it.

James M. Barrie

#50. What is genius? It is the power to be a boy again at will.

James M. Barrie

#51. 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.

James M. Barrie

#52. You see, dear, it is not true that woman was made from man's rib; she was made from his funny bone.

James M. Barrie

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

James M. Barrie

#54. What is algebra exactly; is it those three-cornered things?

James M. Barrie

#55. Every time you say you don't believe in fairies, a fairy dies.

James M. Barrie

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

James M. Barrie

#57. Them that has china plates themsel's is the maist careful not to break the china plates of others

James M. Barrie

#58. Anything is possible if you wish hard enough.

James M. Barrie

#59. All great writers begin with a good leather binding and a respectable title.

James M. Barrie

#60. Peter: Oh, the cleverness of me. Wendy: Of course, I did nothing ... Peter: You did a little. Wendy: Oh, the cleverness of you.

James M. Barrie

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

James M. Barrie

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

James M. Barrie

#63. James Hook, thou not wholly unheroic figure, farewell. For we have come to his last moment.

J.M. Barrie

#64. The most useless are those who never change through the years.

James M. Barrie

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

James M. Barrie

#66. A woman can be anything the man who loves her would have her be.

James M. Barrie

#67. Those who are prepared to die are most prepared to live.

James M. Barrie

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

James M. Barrie

#69. I think it's perfectly lovely the way you talk about girls ...

James M. Barrie

#70. 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.

James M. Barrie

#71. I know not, sir, whether Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare, but if he did not, it seems to me that he missed the opportunity of his life.

James M. Barrie

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

James M. Barrie

#73. For several days after my first book was published, I carried it about in my pocket and took surreptitious peeps at it to make sure the ink had not faded.

James M. Barrie

#74. Some of my plays peter out and some pan out.

James M. Barrie

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

James M. Barrie

#76. Ambition - it is the last infirmity of noble minds.

James M. Barrie

#77. You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip.

James M. Barrie

#78. A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don't find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting.

James M. Barrie

#79. All you need is trust and a little bit of pixie dust!

James M. Barrie

#80. Make your feet your friend.

James M. Barrie

#81. All are keeping a sharp look-out in front, but none suspects that the danger may be creeping up from behind.

James M. Barrie

#82. The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.

James M. Barrie

#83. We are all of us failures, at least, the best of us are.

James M. Barrie

#84. J.M. Barrie was right; it is an awfully big adventure!

Paul James

#85. Facts were never pleasing to him. He acquired them with reluctance and got rid of them with relief. He was never on terms with them until he had stood them on their heads.

James M. Barrie

#86. Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own.

James M. Barrie

#87. One's religion is whatever he is most interested in.

James M. Barrie

#88. I like well to be in the company of explorers

James M. Barrie

#89. I am aware that those hateful persons called Original Researchers now maintain that Raleigh was not the man; but to them I turn a deaf ear.

James M. Barrie

#90. Love is not blind; it is an extra eye, which shows us what is most worthy of regard.

James M. Barrie

#91. You find a glimmer of happiness in this world, there's always someone who wants to destroy it.

James M. Barrie

#92. Men's second childhood begins when a woman gets a hold of him.

James M. Barrie

#93. You canna expect to be baith grand and comfortable.

James M. Barrie

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

James M. Barrie

#95. Every man who is high up likes to think that he has done it all himself, and the wife smiles and lets it go at that.

James M. Barrie

#96. Young boys should never be sent to bed. They always wake up a day older.

James M. Barrie

#97. 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.

James M. Barrie

#98. Fame is rot; daughters are the thing.

James M. Barrie

#99. Always be a littler kinder than necessary.

James M. Barrie

#100. The best of our fiction is by novelists who allow that it is as good as they can give, and the worst by novelists who maintain that they could do much better if only the public would let
them.

James M. Barrie