J. M. Barrie - Time Quotes

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After a time he fell asleep, and some unsteady fairies had to climb over him on their way home from an orgy.

J. M. Barrie
MISS SUSAN: What is algebra exactly; is it those three- cornered things?
PHOEBE: It is x minus y equals z plus y and things like that. And all the time you are saying they are equal, you feel in your heart, why should they be?

J. M. Barrie
There are, I dare say, many lovers who would never have been drawn to each other had they met for the first time, as, say, they met the second time.

J. M. Barrie
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. They live in nests on the tops of trees; and the mauve ones are boys and the white ones are girls, and the blue ones are just little sillies who are not sure what they are.

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
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
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
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
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
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
Sometimes the little boy who calls me father brings me an invitation from his mother: "I shall be so pleased if you will come and see me," and I always reply in some such words as these: "Dear madam, I decline." And if David asks why I decline, I explain that it is because I have no desire to meet the woman.
"Come this time, father," he urged lately, "for it is her birthday, and she is twenty-six," which is so great an age to David, that I think he fears she cannot last much longer.

J. M. Barrie
Our heroine knew that the mother would always leave the window open for her children to fly back by; so they stayed away for years and had a lovely time...

J. M. Barrie
Tink was not all bad: or, rather, she was all bad just now, but, on the other hand, sometimes she was all good. Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time. They are, however, allowed to change, only it must be a complete change.

J. M. Barrie
There is a saying in the Neverland that, every time you breathe, a grown-up dies.

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

J. M. Barrie
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. Very likely if they said this in the Kensington Gardens, they were standing looking at a fairy all the time. The reason they were cheated was that she pretended to be something else. This is one of their best tricks.

J. M. Barrie
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
You won't forget me, Peter, will you, before spring-cleaning time comes? Of course Peter promised, and then he flew away. He took Mrs. Darling's kiss with him. The kiss that had been for no one else Peter took quite easily. Funny. But she seemd satisfied.

J. M. Barrie
Michael believed longer than the other boys, though they jeered at him; so he was with Wendy when Peter came for her at the end of the first year. She flew away with Peter in the frock she had woven from leaves and berries in the Neverland, and her one fear was that he might notice how short it had become; but he never noticed, he had so much to say about himself.
She had looked forward to thrilling talks with him about old times, but new adventures had crowded the old ones from his mind.

J. M. Barrie
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
"There ought to be one fairy for every boy and girl."
"Ought to be? Isn't there?"
"No. You see children know such a lot now, they soon don't believe in fairies, and every time a child says, 'I don't believe in fairies,' there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead."

J. M. Barrie
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.

J. M. Barrie
Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time, and then when we have need of special attention we nobly return for it, confident that we shall be rewarded instead of smacked.

J. M. Barrie
Every time a child says 'I don't believe in fairies' there is a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead.

J. M. Barrie
Peter flung out his arms. There were no children there, and it was night time; but he addressed all who might be dreaming of the Neverland, and who were therefore nearer to him than you think: boys and girls in their nighties, and naked papooses in their baskets hung from trees.
"Do you believe?" he cried.

J. M. Barrie
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