Top 100 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. 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
#4. J.M. Barrie was right; it is an awfully big adventure!
Paul James
#5. 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
#6. 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
#7. 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
#9. In dinner talk it is perhaps allowable to fling any faggot rather than let the fire go out.
James M. Barrie
#11. 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
#12. I don't want to go to school and learn solemn things.
J.M. Barrie
#13. 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
#14. Why, what is the matter, father dear?' 'Matter!' he yelled; he really yelled. 'This tie, it will not tie.
J.M. Barrie
#15. 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
#16. To reveal who he really was would even at this date set the country in a blaze.
J.M. Barrie
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. She says she glories in being abandoned
J.M. Barrie
#20. Second to the right,' said Peter, 'and then straight on till morning.' 'What
J.M. Barrie
#22. Life is a cup of tea; the more heartily we drink the sooner we reach the dregs.
James M. Barrie
#23. 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
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. If you wish it.
Slightly: If you wish it?
Peter: IF YOU WISH IT.
J.M. Barrie
#30. 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
#31. I think it's perfectly lovely the way you talk about girls ...
James M. Barrie
#32. 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
#33. David tells me that fairies never say 'We feel happy': what they say is, 'We feel dancey'.
J.M. Barrie
#34. There is a saying in the Neverland that,every time you breathe, a grown-up dies.
J.M. Barrie
#35. 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
#36. All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.
J.M. Barrie
#37. In love-making, as in other arts, those who do it best cannot tell how it is done.
James M. Barrie
#38. Most disquieting reflection of all, was it not bad form to think about good form?
J.M. Barrie
#39. 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
#40. Even though you want to try to, never grow up
J.M. Barrie
#41. Those who are prepared to die are most prepared to live.
James M. Barrie
#42. Do you believe in fairies? ... If you believe, clap your hands!
J.M. Barrie
#43. A woman can be anything the man who loves her would have her be.
James M. Barrie
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. The most useless are those who never change through the years.
James M. Barrie
#47. 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
#48. James Hook, thou not wholly unheroic figure, farewell. For we have come to his last moment.
J.M. Barrie
#49. Would you like an adventure now, or would like to have your tea first?
J.M. Barrie
#51. 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
#52. The man who is in real danger is the man who thinks he is perfectly safe.
James M. Barrie
#53. 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
#54. We are all failures- at least the best of us are.
J.M. Barrie
#56. 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
#57. You just think lovely wonderful thoughts," Peter explained, "and they lift you up in the air.
J.M. Barrie
#58. All great writers begin with a good leather binding and a respectable title.
James M. Barrie
#59. 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
#60. 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
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. Them that has china plates themsel's is the maist careful not to break the china plates of others
James M. Barrie
#65. I sometimes think, Mary, that it is a mistake to have a dog for a nurse.
James M. Barrie
#66. 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
#67. I remember kisses," said Slightly. "Let me see. Aye, that is a kiss. A powerful thing.
J.M. Barrie
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. 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
#72. 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
#73. Every time you say you don't believe in fairies, a fairy dies.
James M. Barrie
#74. What is algebra exactly; is it those three-cornered things?
James M. Barrie
#75. Has it ever struck you that trout bite best on the Sabbath? God's critters tempting decent men.
James M. Barrie
#76. That is ever the way. 'Tis all jealousy to the bride and good wishes to the corpse.
James M. Barrie
#78. Nobody really wants us. So let us watch and say jaggy things, in the hope that some of them will hurt.
J.M. Barrie
#79. 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
#80. The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one does.
J.M. Barrie
#81. 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
#82. 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
#83. But he has still a vague memory that he was a human once,
J.M. Barrie
#84. 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
#86. Take care, lest an adventure is now offered you, which, if accepted, will plunge you in deepest woe.
J.M. Barrie
#87. 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
#88. I suppose it's like the ticking crocodile, isn't it? Time is chasing after all of us.
J.M. Barrie
#91. He swore this terrible oath: Hook or me this time.
J.M. Barrie
#92. 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
#93. 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
#94. Young boys should never be sent to bed. They always wake up a day older.
James M. Barrie
#95. 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
#96. 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
#97. 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
#98. 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
#99. 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
#100. 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
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