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

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• 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

  6 Copy quote

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

  Edmond de Goncourt

  Simple, Civilization, People

  15 Copy quote

• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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

  24 Copy quote

• 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 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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• I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first. I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

  Stephen Hawking

  Death, Suicide, Dark

  "Stephen Hawking: 'There is no heaven; it's a fairy story'". Interview with Ian Sample, www.theguardian.com. May 15, 2011.

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• For a long time I found the celebrities of modern painting and poetry ridiculous. I loved absurd pictures, fanlights, stage scenery, mountebanks backcloths, inn-signs, cheap colored prints; unfashionable literature, church Latin, pornographic books badly spelt, grandmothers novels, fairy stories, little books for children, old operas, empty refrains, simple rhythms.

  Arthur Rimbaud

  Love, Children, Latin

  18 Copy quote

• A myth is, of course, not a fairy story. It is the presentation of facts belonging to one category in the idioms appropriate to another. To explode a myth is accordingly not to deny the facts but to re-allocate them.

  Gilbert Ryle

  Science, Facts, Deny

  Concept of Mind (1949) introduction

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• It's almost a sort of fairy story tale, just what a novelist would write about a discovery.

  Charles Hard Townes

  Writing, Science, Discovery

  "Nobel Prize in Physics". The Academy of Achievement interview, www.achievement.org. March 18, 1991.

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• I'm an interpreter of stories. When I perform it's like sitting down at my piano and telling fairy stories.

  Nat King Cole

  Piano, Sitting Down, Tooth Fairy

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• ....This world needs Utopias as it needs fairy stories. It does not matter so much where we are going, as long as we are making consciously for some definite goal. And a Utopia, however strange or fanciful, is the only possible beacon upon the uncharted seas of the distant future.

  Hendrik Willem van Loon

  Sea, Long, Goal

  11 Copy quote

• Just those three words, said and meant. I love you. They were quite hopeless. He said it as he might have said, I have cancer. His fairy story.

  John Fowles

  Cancer, Love You, Three

  John Fowles (1980). “The collector”, Dell Pub Co

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• When...did it become irrational to dislike religion, any religion, even to dislike it vehemently? When did reason get redescribed as unreason? When were the fairy stories of the superstitious placed above criticism, beyond satire? A religion was not a race. It was an idea, and ideas stood (or fell) because they were strong enough (or too weak) to withstand criticism, not because they were shielded from it. Strong ideas welcomed dissent.

  Salman Rushdie

  Strong, Race, Ideas

  Salman Rushdie (2012). “Joseph Anton”, p.345, Random House

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• There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

  Stephen Hawking

  Dark, Afterlife, People

  "Stephen Hawking: 'There is no heaven; it's a fairy story'". Interview with Ian Sample, www.theguardian.com. May 15, 2011.

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• I was born an only child in Vienna, Austria. My father found hours to sit by me by the library fire and tell fairy stories.

  Hedy Lamarr

  Children, Father, Fire

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• I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Wall, Home, Men

  "On Fairy-Stories". Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of St. Andrews on March 08, 1939. "Essays presented to Charles Williams", 1947.

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• Names are still magic; even Sharon, Karen, Darren, and Warren are magic to somebody somewhere. In fairy stories, naming is knowledge. When I know your name, I can call your name, and when I call your name, you'll come to me.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Names, Magic, Darren

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• There are fairy stories to be written for adults. Stories that are still in a green state.

  Andre Breton

  Adults, Green, States

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