Fairy Stories Quotes

• Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

  Neil Gaiman

  Inspirational, Motivational, Cancer

  Neil Gaiman (2012). “Coraline”, p.7, A&C Black

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• Fairy tales are more than true.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Dragons, Fairy Tale, Coraline

  70 Copy quote

• Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.

  Alexandre Dumas

  Happiness, Fighting, Dragons

  Alexandre Dumas (2003). “The Count of Monte Cristo”, p.18, Bantam Classics

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• I began to believe the fairy tales: You know, how we're all out there looking for our magical missing half.

  Michael Bergin

  Missing You, Believe, Half

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• People don't like the true and simple; they like fairy tales and humbug.

  Edmond de Goncourt

  Simple, Civilization, People

  17 Copy quote

• A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician: he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales.

  Marie Curie

  Children, Hair, Fairy Tale

  "Madame Curie: A Biography". Book by Eve Curie Labouisse, November 30, 1936.

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• I think people should read fairy tales, because were hungry for a mythology that will speak to our fears.

  Sandra Cisneros

  Thinking, People, Fairy Tale

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• There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.

  Ralph Ellison

  Reality, Leaving, Magic

  National Book Award Acceptance Speech, www.nationalbook.org. 1953.

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• Sometimes fairy stories may say best what's to be said.

  C. S. Lewis

  May, Sometimes, Said

  C. S. Lewis (2002). “Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories”, p.47, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• As this world becomes increasingly ugly, callous and materialistic it needs to be reminded that the old fairy stories are rooted in truth, that imagination is of value, that happy endings do, in fact, occur, and that the blue spring mist that make an ugly street look beautiful is just as real a thing as the street itself.

  Elizabeth Goudge

  Beautiful, Spring, Real

  26 Copy quote

• The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Stars, Sea, Bird

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “Tales from the Perilous Realm”, p.315, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons. But children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Children, Dragons, Objections

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• the association of children and fairy-stories is an accident of our domestic history. Fairy-stories have in the modern lettered world been relegated to the “nursery,” as shabby or old-fashioned furniture is relegated to the play-room, primarily because the adults do not want it, and do not mind if it is misused.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Children, Play, Mind

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “Tales from the Perilous Realm”, p.348, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Nothing was easy, and sometimes she failed, and sometimes she thought that the fairy stories were right, that there must indeed be easier ways of living happily ever after; but defeat is a poor ending to any tale, so she kept trying.

  Sonya Hartnett

  Trying, Way, Sometimes

  Sonya Hartnett (2011). “The Ghost's Child”, p.128, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The Resurrection was the greatest ‘eucatastrophe’ possible in the greatest Fairy Story — and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Christian, Lost Love, Joy

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2014). “The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien”, p.100, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Only thin, weak thinkers despise fairy stories. Each one has a true, strange fact hidden in it, you know, which you can find if you look.

  Diana Wynne Jones

  Looks, Facts, Strange

  Diana Wynne Jones (2012). “Fire and Hemlock”, p.113, Penguin

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• Kiran says (the shelf) is full of stories. If it is, then I like fairy stories. Fairy stories are fair. In them wishes are granted, words are enchanted, the honest and brave make it safely through to the last page and the baddies either have to give up their wickedness for ever and ever, no going back, or get ruthlessly written out of the story, which they hardly ever survive. Also in fairy stories there are hardly any of those half-good half-bad people that crop up so constantly in real life and are so difficult to believe in.

  Hilary McKay

  Giving Up, Real, Believe

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• I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story - the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths - which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country. ... I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Country, Drama, Hands

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• Have you ever seen a child sitting on its mother’s knee listening to fairy stories? As long as the child is told of cruel giants and of the terrible suffering of beautiful princesses, it holds its head up and its eyes open; but if the mother begins to speak of happiness and sunshine, the little one closes its eyes and falls asleep with its head against her breast. . . . I am a child like that, too. Others may like stories of flowers and sunshine; but I choose the dark nights and sad destinies.

  Selma Lagerlöf

  Beautiful, Mother, Children

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• The truth is that when one is still a child-or even if one is grown up- and has been well fed, and has slept long and softly and warm; when one has gone to sleep in the midst of a fairy story, and has wakened to find it real, one cannot be unhappy or even look as if one were; and one could not, if one tried, keep a glow of joy out of one's eyes.

  Frances Hodgson Burnett

  Children, Real, Sleep

  Frances Hodgson Burnett (2016). “A Little Princess”, p.137, Xist Publishing

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• Hersesy is denying the word of God, and the word of God is much more reliably expressed in the natural world as it’s revealed through reason and science than in what I have heard described wonderfully as “the giant book of Jewish fairy stories".

  Iain Banks

  Book, Giants, World

  "Sci-Fi Writer Iain Banks Talks Surface Detail's Hell, Creationist Heresy". Interview with Michael Parsons, www.wired.com. October 15, 2010.

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• Adolescents believe that the world belongs to the living, or more particularly to living people their age, so they feel within their rights if they destroy the canon or rewrite the fairy stories or act like Red Guards.

  Robert Bly

  Believe, Rights, People

  Source: www.utne.com

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• One of the things that turns me on the most is imagining new worlds, just as I did as a kid, when I listened to fairy stories and imagined what they looked like and what those worlds were like.

  Nick Willing

  Kids, World, Turn Me

  Source: collider.com

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• As a child, my mother told me lots of fairy stories, many her own invention. She, too, tended to reverse the norm.

  Tanith Lee

  Mother, Children, Invention

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• A child... who has learned from fairy stories to believe that what at first seemed a repulsive, threatening figure can magically change into a most helpful friend is ready to believe that a strange child whom he meets and fears may also be changed from a menace into a desirable companion.

  Bruno Bettelheim

  Children, Believe, Literature

  Bruno Bettelheim (1976). “The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales”, Vintage

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