J. M. Barrie Quotes

142 Sourced Quotes

Oh, you mysterious girls, when you are fifty-two we shall find you out; you must come into the open then. If the mouth has fallen sourly yours the blame: all the meanness your youth concealed have been gathering in your face. But the pretty thoughts and sweet ways and dear, forgotten kindnesses linger there also, to bloom in your twilight like evening primroses.

J. M. Barrie
Build a house?" exclaimed John. "For the Wendy," said Curly. "For Wendy?" John said, aghast. "Why, she is only a girl!" "That," explained Curly, "is why we are her servants.

J. M. Barrie
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.

J. M. Barrie
You see, Wendy, 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
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.

J. M. Barrie
She said out of pity for him, "I shall give you a kiss if you like," but though he once knew, he had long forgotten what kisses are, and he replied, "Thank you," and held out his hand, thinking she had offered to put something into it. This was a great shock to her, but she felt she could not explain without shaming him, so with charming delicacy she gave Peter a thimble which happened to be in her pocket, and pretended that it was a kiss.

J. M. Barrie
We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of it.

J. M. Barrie
And so when Mrs. Darling went back to the night-nursery to see if her husband was asleep, all the beds were occupied. The children waited for her cry of joy, but it did not come. She saw them, but she did not believe they were there. You see, she saw them in their beds so often in her dreams that she thought this was just the dream hanging around her still.

J. M. Barrie
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
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
Someone said that God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.

J. M. Barrie
Them that has china plates themsels is the maist careful no to break the china plates of others.

J. M. Barrie
No, no," Mr. Darling always said, "I am responsible for it all. I, George Darling, did it. MEA CULPA, MEA CULPA." He had had a classical education.

J. M. Barrie
Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time.

J. M. Barrie
All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, "Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!" This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.

J. M. Barrie
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.

J. M. Barrie
She asked where he lived. Second to the right,' said Peter, 'and then straight on till morning.

J. M. Barrie
"In twenty years," I said, smiling at her tears, "a man grows humble, Mary. I have stored within me a great fund of affection, with nobody to give it to, and I swear to you, on the word of a soldier, that if there is one of those ladies who can be got to care for me I shall be very proud." Despite her semblance of delight I knew that she was wondering at me, and I wondered at myself, but it was true.

J. M. Barrie
As you look at Wendy, you may see her hair becoming white, and her figure little again, for all this happened long ago. Jane is now a common grown-up, with a daughter called Margaret; and every spring cleaning time, except when he forgets, Peter comes for Margaret and takes her to the Neverland, where she tells him stories about himself, to which he listens eagerly. When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter's mother in turn; and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.

J. M. Barrie
When she expressed a doubtful hope that Tinker Bell would be glad to see her, he said, 'Who is Tinker Bell?' 'O Peter,' she said, shocked; but even when she explained he could not remember. 'There are such a lot of them,' he said. 'I expect she is no more.' I expect he was right, for fairies don't live long, but they are so little that a short time seems a good while to them.

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

J. M. Barrie
She's awfully fond of Wendy,' he said to himself. He was angry with her now for not seeing why she could not have Wendy. The reason was so simple: 'I'm fond of her too. We can't both have her, lady.

J. M. Barrie
Let no one who loves be called altogether unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow, and Babbie knew that Gavin loved her. Yet she stood in woe among the stiff berry bushes, as one who stretches forth her hands to Love and sees him looking for her, and knows she must shrink from the arms she would lie in, and only call to him in a voice he cannot hear. This is not a love that is always bitter. It grows sweet with age.

J. M. Barrie
Can anything harm us, mother, after the night-lights are lit?" Nothing, precious," she said; "they are the eyes a mother leaves behind her to guard her children.

J. M. Barrie
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.

J. M. Barrie
If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire.

J. M. Barrie
The Elizabethan age might be better named the beginning of the smoking era..

J. M. Barrie
Yet if he upbraided her in his hurry, it was to repent bitterly his temper the next, and to feel its effects more than she, temper being a weapon that we hold by the blade.

J. M. Barrie
I had been gone a fortnight when the telegram was put into my hands. I had got a letter from my sister, a few hours before, saying that all was well at home. The telegram said in five words that she had died suddenly the previous night. There was no mention of my mother, and I was three days' journey from home.
The news I got on reaching London was this: my mother did not understand that her daughter was dead, and they were waiting for me to tell her.

J. M. Barrie
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