The Quotes canon

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Mark Twain9 quotes
Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden. — Mark Twain · 1876There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. — Mark Twain · 1884All kings is mostly rapscallions. — Mark Twain · 1884It’s lovely to live on a raft. — Mark Twain · 1884In order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. — Mark Twain · 1876I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can't stand it. I been there before. — Mark Twain · 1884All 9 quotes →
Roald Dahl8 quotes
I will not pretend I wasn't petrified. I was. But mixed in with the awful fear was a glorious feeling of excitement. Most of the really exciting things we do in our lives scare us to death. They wouldn't be exciting if they didn't. — Roald Dahl · 1975A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely. — Roald Dahl · 1980You’ll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that. — Roald Dahl · 1972So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall. — Roald Dahl · 1964Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. — Roald Dahl · 1988But there was one other thing that the grownups also knew, and it was this: that however small the chance might be of striking lucky, the chance was there. The chance had to be there. — Roald Dahl · 1964All 8 quotes →
He saw clearly how plain and simple—how narrow, even—it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome. — Kenneth Grahame · 1908After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working. — Kenneth Grahame · 1908But Mole stood still a moment, held in thought. As one wakened suddenly from a beautiful dream, who struggles to recall it, and can recapture nothing but a dim sense of the beauty of it, the beauty! Till that, too, fades away in its turn, and the dreamer bitterly accepts the hard, cold waking and all its penalties. — Kenneth Grahame · 1908Secrets had an immense attraction to him, because he never could keep one, and he enjoyed the sort of unhallowed thrill he experienced when he went and told another animal, after having faithfully promised not to. — Kenneth Grahame · 1908Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. — Kenneth Grahame · 1908When the girl returned, some hours later, she carried a tray, with a cup of fragrant tea steaming on it; and a plate piled up with very hot buttered toast, cut thick, very brown on both sides, with the butter running through the holes in great golden drops, like honey from the honeycomb. The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one's ramble was over, and slippered feet were propped on the fender, of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries. — Kenneth Grahame · 1908All 7 quotes →
"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax— Of cabbages—and kings— And why the sea is boiling hot— And whether pigs have wings." — Lewis Carroll · 1871Curiouser and curiouser! — Lewis Carroll · 1865Begin at the beginning...and go on till you come to the end: then stop. — Lewis Carroll · 1865"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic." — Lewis Carroll · 1871Will you, wo'n't you, will you, wo'n't you, will you join the dance? — Lewis Carroll · 1865
Dr. Seuss3 quotes
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not. — Dr. Seuss · 1971You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And you are the guy who'll decide where to go. — Dr. Seuss · 1990And when they played they really played. And when they worked they really worked. — Dr. Seuss · 1939
A.A. Milne2 quotes
Eeyore was saying to himself, "This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated, if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it." — A.A. Milne · 1926When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it. — A.A. Milne · 1928
E.B. White2 quotes
What do you mean, less than nothing? I don't think there is any such thing as less than nothing. Nothing is absolutely the limit of nothingness. It's the lowest you can go. It's the end of the line. How can something be less than nothing? If there were something that was less than nothing, then nothing would not be nothing, it would be something-even though it's just a very little bit of something. But if nothing is nothing, then nothing has nothing that is less than it is. — E.B. White · 1952You have been my friend... That in itself is a tremendous thing. — E.B. White · 1952
Aesop1 quote
Then one day there really was a wolf but when the boy shouted, they didn't believe him. — Aesop
Don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden: your father had an accident there, he was put into a pie by Mrs. McGregor. — Beatrix Potter · 1902
Lots of people talk to animals. Not very many listen though. That's the problem. — Benjamin Hoff · 1982
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night Sailed off in a wooden shoe- Sailed on a river of crystal light, Into a sea of dew. — Eugene Field · 1889
Max stepped into his private boat and waved good-bye and sailed back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night of his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him and it was still hot. — Maurice Sendak · 1963
I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. — Rudyard Kipling · 1902