Top 80 J.M. Barrie Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.”

— J.M. Barrie

2. “To die would be an awfully big adventure.”

— J.M. Barrie

Featured in: Adventure Quotes

3. “God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.”

— J.M. Barrie

Featured in: Making Memories Quotes, December Quotes

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

— J.M. Barrie

Featured in: Happy Sunday Quotes, Satisfaction Quotes, Happy Friday Quotes, Happy Monday Quotes, Happy Wednesday Quotes

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

— J.M. Barrie

Featured in: Dreaming Big Quotes, Growth Mindset Quotes, Boldness Quotes, Different Quotes, Doubt Quotes

6. “We are all failures – at least the best of us are.”

— J.M. Barrie

Featured in: Moving On Quotes

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

— J.M. Barrie

Featured in: Dreaming Big Quotes, Manifestation Quotes

8. “Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.”

— J.M. Barrie

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

— J.M. Barrie

10. “Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always try to be a little kinder than is necessary?”

— J.M. Barrie

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

— J.M. Barrie

12. “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.”

— J.M. Barrie

13. “So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Never Never Land!”

— J.M. Barrie

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

— J.M. Barrie

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

— J.M. Barrie

16. “I do believe in fairies! I do! I do!”

— J.M. Barrie

17. “All children, except one, grow up.”

— J.M. Barrie

18. “Forget them, Wendy. Forget them all. Come with me where you’ll never, never have to worry about grown up things again. Never is an awfully long time.”

— J.M. Barrie

19. “If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!”

— J.M. Barrie

20. “If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire.”

— J.M. Barrie

21. “One girl is worth more use than 20 boys.”

— J.M. Barrie

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

— J.M. Barrie

23. “Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.”

— J.M. Barrie

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

— J.M. Barrie

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

— J.M. Barrie

26. “All you need is trust and a little bit of pixie dust!”

— J.M. Barrie

27. “Young boys should never be sent to bed. They always wake up a day older.”

— J.M. Barrie

28. “When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laughter broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies – Peter Pan.”

— J.M. Barrie

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

— J.M. Barrie

30. “Second star to the right and straight on ’til morning.”

— J.M. Barrie

31. “I taught you to fight and to fly. What more could there be?”

— J.M. Barrie

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

— J.M. Barrie

33. “Boy, why are you crying?”

— J.M. Barrie

34. “When a new baby laughs for the first time a new fairy is born, and as there are always new babies there are always new fairies.”

— J.M. Barrie

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

— J.M. Barrie

36. “Wendy, Wendy, when you are sleeping in your silly bed you might be flying about with me saying funny things to the stars.”

— J.M. Barrie

37. “I don’t want to go to school and learn solemn things.”

— J.M. Barrie

38. “Wendy: Sir, you are both ungallant and deficient! Peter: How am I deficient? Wendy: You’re just a boy.”

— J.M. Barrie

39. “You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.”

— J.M. Barrie

40. “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.”

— J.M. Barrie

41. “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 for ever barred.”

— J.M. Barrie

42. “He was a poet; and they are never exactly grown-up.”

— J.M. Barrie

43. “Years rolled on again, and Wendy had a daughter. This ought not to be written in ink but in a golden splash.”

— J.M. Barrie

44. “Second to the right, and straight on till morning.? That, Peter had told Wendy, was the way to the Neverland; but even birds, carrying maps and consulting them at windy corners, could not have sighted it with these instructions. Peter, you see, just said anything that came into his head.”

— J.M. Barrie

45. “You won’t forget me, Peter, will you, before spring-cleaning time comes? Of course Peter promised, and then he flew away. He took Mrs. Darling’s kiss with him. The kiss that had been for no one else Peter took quite easily. Funny. But she seemd satisfied.”

— J.M. Barrie

46. “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.”

— J.M. Barrie

47. “Feeling that Peter was on his way back, the Neverland had again woke into life. We ought to use the pluperfect and say wakened, but woke is better and was always used by Peter.”

— J.M. Barrie

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

— J.M. Barrie

49. “Fairies don’t live long, but they are so little that a short time seems a good while to them.”

— J.M. Barrie

50. “Nobody really wants us. So let us watch and say jaggy things, in the hope that some of them will hurt.”

— J.M. Barrie