J.M. Barrie Quotes

Sir James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937)

J. M. Barrie was a Scottish novelist and playwright, best remembered as the creator of Peter Pan. He was born and educated in Scotland and then moved to London, where he wrote a number of successful novels and plays. (J.M. Barrie Quotes)

“A moment after the fairy’s entrance the window was blown open by the breathing of the little stars, and Peter dropped in.”
Peter Pan

“After you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but he will never afterwards be quite the same boy. No one ever gets over the first unfairness; no one except Peter.”
Peter Pan

“All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.”
Peter Pan

“All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.”
Peter Pan

“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.”
Peter Pan

“David tells me that fairies never say ‘We feel happy’: what they say is, ‘We feel dancey’.”
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

“Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.”
Peter Pan

“Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time.”
Peter Pan

“For otherwise he would have lost faith in his power to fly, and the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.”
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

“He looked at her uncomfortably; blinking, you know, like one not sure whether he was awake or asleep.”
Peter Pan

“He was a poet; and they are never exactly grown-up.”
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

“I can give you the power to fly to her house,” the Queen said, “but I can’t open the door for you.”
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

“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 Quotes)
Margaret Ogilvy

“I have seen him climbing a tree while she stood beneath him in unutterable anguish; she had to let him climb, for boys must be brave, but I am sure that, as she watched him, she fell from every branch.”
The Little White Bird

“I suppose it’s like the ticking crocodile, isn’t it? Time is chasing after all of us.”
Peter Pan

“If you cannot teach me to fly, teach me to sing.”
Peter Pan

“I’m not young enough to know everything.”
The Admirable Crichton

“I’m youth, I’m joy, I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.”
Peter Pan

“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.”
Peter Pan

“It is frightfully difficult to know much about the fairies, and almost the only thing for certain is that there are fairies wherever there are children.”
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

“It is glorious fun racing down the Hump, but you can’t do it on windy days because then you are not there, but the fallen leaves do it instead of you. There is almost nothing that has such a keen sense of fun as a fallen leaf.”
The Little White Bird

“It is idle to attempt to overtake a pretty young woman carrying pork chops. I was now determined to be done with her. First, however, to find out their abode, which was probably within easy distance of the shop. I even conceived them lured into taking their house by the advertisement, “Conveniently situation for the Pork Emporium.”
The Little White Bird

“It is not in doing what you like, but in liking what you do that is the secret of happiness.”
Peter Pan

“It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for the next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day.”
Peter Pan

“Let no one who loves be called altogether unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow.”
The Little Minister

“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.”
The Little White Bird

“Life is a long lesson in humility.”
The Little Minister

“Love, it is said, is blind, but love is not blind. It is an extra eye, which shows us what is most worthy of regard. To see the best is to see most clearly, and it is the lover’s privilege.”
The Little Minister

“My mother’s favourite paraphrase is one known in our house as David’s because it was the last he learned to repeat. It was also the last thing she read — Art thou afraid his power shall fail When comes thy evil day? And can an all-creating arm Grow weary or decay? I heard her voice gain strength as she read it, I saw her timid face take courage, but when came my evil day, then at the dawning, alas for me, I was afraid.”
Margaret Ogilvy

“Never is an awfully long time.”
Peter Pan

“Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.”
Peter Pan

“Next moment he was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, “To die will be an awfully big adventure.”
Peter Pan

“On these magic shores children at play are forever beaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.”
Peter Pan

“Peter became very clever at helping the birds to build their nests; soon he could build better than a wood-pigeon, and nearly as well as a blackbird, though never did he satisfy the finches, and he made nice little water-troughs near the nests and dug up worms for the young ones with his fingers. He also became very learned in bird-lore, and knew an east wind from a west wind by its smell, and he could see the grass growing and hear the insects walking about inside the tree-trunks.” (J.M. Barrie Quotes)
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

“She also said she would give him a kiss if he liked, but Peter did not know what she meant, and he held out his hand expectantly.”
Peter Pan

“She has been putting qualities into David, altering him, turning him forever on a lathe since the day she first knew him, and indeed long before, and all so deftly that he is still called a child of nature.”
The Little White Bird

“So fond of babes was this little mother that she had always room near her for one more”
The Little White Bird

“Stars are beautiful, but they may not take an active part in anything, they must just look on forever. 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.”
Peter Pan

“Surely a spirited old lady may be the prettiest sight in the world.”
The Little White Bird

“The door’, replied Maimie, ‘will always, always be open, and mother will always be waiting at it for me.”
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

“The fairies, as their custom, clapped their hands with delight over their cleverness, and they were so madly in love with the little house that they could not bear to think they had finished it.”
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

“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.”
The Little Minister

“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.”
Peter Pan

“The reason birds can fly and we can’t is simply because they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.”
The Little White Bird

“The very smell of tobacco is abominable, for one cannot get it out of the curtains, and there is little pleasure in existence unless the curtains are all right.”
My Lady Nicotine

“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.”
The Little Minister

“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 forever barred.”
Peter Pan

“There is almost nothing that has such a keen sense of fun as a fallen leaf.”
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

“They took it for granted that if they went he would go also, but really they scarcely cared. Thus children are ever so ready, when novelty knocks, to desert their dearest ones.”
Peter Pan

“They were going round and round the island, but they did not meet because all were going at the same rate.”
Peter Pan

“To die will be an awfully big adventure.”
Peter Pan

“To live will be an awfully big adventure.”
Peter Pan

“We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of it.”
Margaret Ogilvy

“We were having another look among the bushes for David’s lost worsted ball, and instead of the ball we found a lovely nest made of the worsted, and containing four eggs, with scratches on them very like David’s handwriting, so we think they must have been the mother’s love-letters to the little ones inside.” (J.M. Barrie Quotes)
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

“What is afraid?’ asked Peter longingly. He thought it must be some splendid thing. ‘I do wish you would teach me how to be afraid, Maimie,’ he said.”
The Little White Bird

“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.”
Peter Pan

“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.”
The Little White Bird

“Would you like an adventure now, or would like to have your tea first?”
Peter Pan

“You can be good in the Broad Walk all the time, but not at the Round Pond, and the reason is that you forget, and, when you remember, you are so wet that you may as well be wetter.”
The Little White Bird

“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.”
Peter Pan