Top 86 Nesbit's Quotes
#1. Not all of E. Nesbit's children's books are fantasies, but even the most realistic somehow seem magical. In her holiday world, nobody ever goes to school, though all the kids know their English history, Greek myths, and classic tales of derring-do.
Michael Dirda
#2. Perhaps there's given up being magic because people didn't believe in it any more.
E. Nesbit
#3. 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
#5. The tragedy wasn't that Stanford White died, but that I lived.
Evelyn Nesbit
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. Girls are just as clever as boys, and don't you forget it!
E. Nesbit
#11. Perhaps she did more than anyone else, for she slapped the King and put him to bed without his tea,
E. Nesbit
#12. 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
#13. Life will give you what you ask of here if only you ask long enough and plainly enough.
E. Nesbit
#14. I'd like to marry a lady who had trances, and only woke up once or twice a year
E. Nesbit
#15. Nobody can live in the past or the future without being something of a nut.
Evelyn Nesbit
#16. 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
#17. (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
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. 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
#21. I've not got much money, but I've got heaps of ideas.
E. Nesbit
#22. 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
#23. For London is like prison for children, especially if their relations are not rich.
E. Nesbit
#24. 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
#25. 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
#26. The Baby said, 'Wanty go walky'; and the fly stopped with a last rattle and jolt.
E. Nesbit
#27. Everyone felt as if it had been trying not to cry all its life,
E. Nesbit
#28. they would soon be old enough to read The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit and Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome, and eventually Iris Murdoch and Alan Bennett. They could all be readers, and maybe even uncommon ones.
Will Schwalbe
#29. 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
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. Robert rushed to the gravel-pit, found the Psammead, and presently wished for - But that, too, is another story.
E. Nesbit
#34. Everything has an end, and you get to it if you only keep all on.
E. Nesbit
#35. Time is, as you are probably aware, merely a convenient fiction. There is no such thing as time.
E. Nesbit
#36. 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
#37. We don't sleep to sleep, dammit, any more than we eat to eat . We sleep to dream. We're amphibians. We live in two elements and we need both.
Edward Nesbit
Lindsay Clarke
#38. 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
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. 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
#42. Bean felt a rush of sweet nostalgia for the woman who had introduced us to E. Nesbit and Edward Eager and Laura Ingalls Wilder ...
Eleanor Brown
#43. But it's raining cats and dogs,' said Jane.
E. Nesbit
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. 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
#50. 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
#51. 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
#52. There is no bond like having read and liked the same books.
E. Nesbit
#53. Time and space are only forms of thought.
E. Nesbit
#54. (The Gentle Reader may perhaps have suffered from this difficulty.)
E. Nesbit
#55. 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
#56. But what's the use of belonging anywhere if you're invisible?
E. Nesbit
#57. 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
#58. It is a curious thing that people only ask if you are enjoying yourself when you aren't.
E. Nesbit
#59. I think magic went out when people began to have steam-engines, and newspapers, and telephones and wireless telegraphing.
E. Nesbit
#60. 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
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. We felt that we were a portrait on the wall, more invisible the longer it had been in its location
TaraShea Nesbit
#64. What if there is a carefully shielded alliance with a clear aim to break Washington? An alliance that has relentlessly been carrying out that plan for decades, under the guise of something completely different?
Jeff Nesbit
#65. Or, for one of our mothers, the secret to a good marriage, she said, was sex.
TaraShea Nesbit
#66. And where are you going?"
"I dunno," said the Spangled Boy. "I'm running from, not to."
Book: Wet Magic, Chapter 5.
E. Nesbit
#67. That body did not bleed while I carried it, Nesbit. You touch it but a moment, and it bleeds."
"No, I didn't kill her."
... "The dead always know who to blame. They are very good that way.
Laurell K. Hamilton
#68. A red, red rose, all wet with dew, With leaves of green by red shot through.
E. Nesbit
#69. 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
#70. He said that his eyes were red because he had a cold.
E. Nesbit
#71. It is wonderful how quickly you get used to things, even the most astonishing.
E. Nesbit
#72. If you're lucky enough to be different, don't you ever changed - Taylor Swift
E. Nesbit
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. It's not respectable,' she said.
And when people say that, it's no use
anyone's saying anything.
E. Nesbit
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. Authors as diverse as Rudyard Kipling, E. Nesbit, and J. R. R. Tolkien have shaped modern paganism as greatly as any theological underpinnings.
Liz Williams
#79. 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
#81. 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
#82. 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
#83. 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
#84. Out, out, into the night,
The belfry bells are ours by right!
E. Nesbit
#85. 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
#86. I'm kind of a reluctant Anglophile. My mother's a children's librarian, and all of the children's literature I read was from her childhood - E. Nesbit and Dickens, which isn't children's literature at all, but I was sort of steeped in English literature. I thought I was of that world.
Jefferson Mays
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