One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.
I gave up writing children’s books. I wanted to escape from them as I had once wanted to escape from ‘Punch’: as I have always wanted to escape. In vain.
The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.
Don’t underestimate the value of doing nothing, of just going along, listening to all the thing you can’t hear, and not bothering.
Some people care too much. I think it’s called love.
What I say is that, if a fellow really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.
My spelling is Wobbly. It’s good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.
If one is to be called a liar, one may as well make an effort to deserve the name.
I suppose that every one of us hopes secretly for immortality; to leave, I mean, a name behind him which will live forever in this world, whatever he may be doing, himself, in the next.
You will be better advised to watch what we do instead of what we say.
Is ‘The Wind in the Willows’ a children’s book? Is ‘Alice in Wonderland?’ Is ‘Treasure Island?’ These are masterpieces which we read with pleasure as children, but with how much more pleasure when we are grown-up.
A clever conjurer is welcome anywhere, and those of us whose powers of entertainment are limited to the setting of booby-traps or the arranging of apple-pie beds must view with envy the much greater tribute of laughter and applause which is the lot of the prestidigitator with some natural gift for legerdemain.
War is something of man’s own fostering, and if all mankind renounces it, then it is no longer there.
Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.
Tiggers don’t like honey.
You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.
Never forget me, because if I thought you would, I’d never leave.
Golf is so popular simply because it is the best game in the world at which to be bad.
The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief – call it what you will – than any book ever written. It has emptied more churches than all the counter-attractions of cinema, motor-bicycle and golf course.
Bores can be divided into two classes; those who have their own particular subject, and those who do not need a subject.
No sensible author wants anything but praise.
A writer wants something more than money for his work: he wants permanence.
I am sure of this: that no one can write a book which children will like unless he write it for himself first.
