T.H. White · 823 pages
Rating: (2.8K votes)
“Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically--to those who hardly think about us in return.”
“Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.”
“If there is one thing I can't stand, it is stupidity. I always say that stupidity is the Sin against the Holy Ghost.”
“You run a grave risk, my boy," said the magician, "of being turned into a piece of bread, and toasted.”
“Life is too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds”
“I think I ought to have some eddication,"said the Wart, "I can't think of anything to do.”
“Merlin: "Grown-ups have developed an unpleasant habit lately, I notice, of comforting themselves for their degradation by pretending that children are childish. I trust we are free of this?"
Arthur: "Everybody knows that children are more intelligent than their parents."
Merlin: "You and I know it, but the people who are going to read this book do not.
Our readers of that time (...) have exactly three ideas in their magnificent noodles. The first is that the human species is superior to others. The second, that the twentieth century is superior to other centuries. And the third, that human adults of the twentieth century are superior to their young. (...)”
“Before that night, I’d had no idea my father was so well suited for wreaking havoc or equipped to make that lightning-quick transformation from sanity to lunacy that is indispensable in enacting the unbridled urge to destroy.”
“Aunt Libby: "I think I'm getting married! I've been dying to tell you."
Raven: "You are? Congrats! Dad didn't mention..."
Aunt Libby: "Well, okay, it's not official or anything. In fact, we haven't officially gone out yet. I just met him last night.”
“The universe is so very complicated," said Dr Dimble.
"So you have said rather often before, dear," replied Mrs Dimble
"Have I?" he said with a smile. "How often, I wonder? As often as you've told the story of the pony and trap at Dawlish?"
"Cecil! I haven't told it for years."
"My dear, I heard you telling it to Camilla the night before last."
"Oh, Camilla! That was quite different. She'd never heard it before."
"I don't know if we can even be certain about that...the universe being so complicated and all." For a few minutes there was silence between them.
"But about Merlin?" asked Mrs Dimble presently.
"Have you ever noticed," said Dimble," that the universe, and every little bit of the universe, is always hardening and narrowing and coming to a point?"
His wife waited as those wait who know by long experience the mental processes of the person who is talking to them.
"I mean this," said Dimble, answering the question she had not asked. "If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family—anything you like—at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren't quite so sharp; and that there's going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing.”
“Whenever someone dies, a part of the universe dies too. Everything a person felt, experience and saw dies with them, like tears in the rain.”
“Can I get a lock for my tent?
Bears can't unzip tents, Lana.
Well, chainsaw psychos who wander the woods looking for young girls all alone to chop up into pieces can.
There are no chainsaw psychos! I can't believe you've never been camping. It's safe, Lana. I promise.
Easy for you to say. You'll be snuggled up safely in the arms of Beau Vincent. I'm more than positive he could take on a black bear.”
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