J.M. Barrie · 256 pages
Rating: (213K votes)
“To die will be an awfully big adventure.”
“All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.”
“Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.”
“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.”
“Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.”
“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.”
“Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning. ”
“To live will be an awfully big adventure.”
“Wendy," Peter Pan continued in a voice that no woman has ever yet been able to resist, "Wendy, one girl is more use than twenty boys.”
“Never is an awfully long time.”
“All children, except one, grow up.”
“Stars are beautiful, but they may not take part in anything, they must just look on forever.”
“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.”
“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 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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“If you cannot teach me to fly, teach me to sing.”
“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.”
“I suppose it's like the ticking crocodile, isn't it? Time is chasing after all of us.”
“Pan, who and what art thou?" he cried huskily.
"I'm youth, I'm joy," Peter answered at a venture, "I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg.”
“I taught you to fight and to fly. What more could there be?”
“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.”
“Just always be waiting for me.”
“Stars are beautiful, but they may not take an active part in anything, they must just look on for ever. It is a punishment put on them for something they did so long ago that no star now knows what it was. So the older ones have become glassy-eyed and seldom speak (winking is the star language), but the little ones still wonder.”
“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.”
“She asked where he lived.
Second to the right,' said Peter, 'and then straight on till morning.”
“There is a saying in the Neverland that,every time you breathe, a grown-up dies.”
“She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.”
“Anyway, what can one do here? I am seriously thinking of running away and joining the Foreign Legion or the North-West Mounted Police—whichever work the shorter hours.”
“This child could not command a pet dove."
Harsh but true, lol!”
“Two of the men tiptoed to the pile of brush. One of them”
“My memory plays me odd tricks these days [...] Age spares us nothing, old friend. Like ancient trees, we die from the top.”
“To be is to do’ — Socrates.
‘To do is to be’ — Jean-Paul Sartre.
‘Do be do be do’ — Frank Sinatra.”
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