J. M. Barrie Quotes
Never is an awfully long time.
All children, except one, grow up.
Life is a long lesson in humility.
To die will be an awfully big adventure.
I'm not young enough to know everything.
If you cannot teach me to fly, teach me to sing.
Do you believe in fairies?...If you believe, clap your hands!
All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.
God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.
All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.
Let no one who loves be unhappy, even love unreturned has its rainbow.
"If you believe," he shouted to them, "clap your hands; don't let Tink die."
One's religion is whatever he is most interested in, and yours is Success.
We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of it.
The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.
Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.
Stars are beautiful but they may not take part in anything, they just look on forever.
I suppose it's like the ticking crocodile, isn't it? Time is chasing after all of us.
It is not in doing what you like, but in liking what you do that is the secret of happiness.
Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?
Ah, but John, whatever you do, you do it so tremendously; and if you were to love, what a passion it would be.
The last thing he ever said to me was, "Just always be waiting for me, and then some night you will hear me crowing."
Your heart is as fresh as your face; and that is well. The useless men are those who never change with the years.
Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.
Of course, it also shows that Peter is ever so old, but he is really always the same age, so that does not matter in the least.
Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time.
You mustn’t hurt him. If you haven’t loved deep and true, that’s just because you have never met a woman yet, John, capable of inspiring it.
Life and death, the child and the mother, are ever meeting as the one draws into harbour and the other sets sail. They exchange a bright "All's well" and pass on.
It is frightfully difficult to know much about the fairies, and almost the only thing known for certain is that there are fairies wherever there are children.
So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Never Never Land!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Why can't you fly now, mother?"
"Because I am grown up, dearest. When people grow up they forget the way."
"Why do they forget the way?"
"Because they are no longer gay and innocent and heartless. It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly."
Oh, it's — 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. Some women, the few, have charm for all; and most have charm for one. But some have charm for none.
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.
Your heart is as fresh as your face; and that is well. The useless men are those who never change with the years. Many views that I held to in my youth and long afterwards are a pain to me now, and I am carrying away from Thrums memories of errors into which I fell at every stage of my ministry. When you are older you will know that life is a long lesson in humility.
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.
The gladness of living was in your step, your voice was melody, and he was wondering what love might be.
You were the daughter of a summer night, born where all the birds are free, and the moon christened you with her soft light to dazzle the eyes of man. Not our little minister alone was stricken by you into his second childhood. To look upon you was to rejoice that so fair a thing could be; to think of you is still to be young.
Every living thing was shunning him. Poor little Peter Pan, he sat down and cried, and even then he did not know that, for a bird, he was sitting on his wrong part. It is a blessing that he did not know, for otherwise he would have lost faith in his power to fly, and the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it. The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.
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.
