Top 280 James M. Barrie Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don’t find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting.”

— James M. Barrie

52. “Ghosts were created when the first man awoke in the night.”

— James M. Barrie

53. “Mrs. Darling was married in white, and at first she kept the books perfectly, almost gleefully, as if it were a game, not so much as a brussels sprout was missing; but by and by whole cauliflowers dropped out, and instead of them there were pictures of babies without faces. She drew them when she should have been totting up. They were Mrs. Darling’s guesses.”

— James M. Barrie

54. “You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.”

— James M. Barrie

55. “You canna expect to be baith grand and comfortable.”

— James M. Barrie

56. “Girls are much too clever to fall out of their prams.”

— James M. Barrie

57. “I’ll hold you in my heart, until I can hold you in my arms.”

— James M. Barrie

58. “There are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make.”

— James M. Barrie

59. “A loving wife is better than making 50 in cricket, or even 99, beyond that I will not go.”

— James M. Barrie

60. “Fame is rot; daughters are the thing.”

— James M. Barrie

61. “It’s a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don’t need to have anything else, and if you don’t have it, it doesn’t much matter what else you have. Some women, the few, have charm for all; and most have charm for one. But some have charm for none.”

— James M. Barrie

62. “I am youth. I am joy. I am freedom!” said Peter Pan.”

— James M. Barrie

63. “I think I love you in my own way, but I thought I loved you in their way, and it is the only way that counts in this world of theirs.”

— James M. Barrie

64. “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.”

— James M. Barrie

65. “The Elizabethan age might be better named the beginning of the smoking era...”

— James M. Barrie

66. “Take care, lest an adventure is now offered you, which, if accepted, will plunge you in deepest woe.”

— James M. Barrie

67. “Odd things happen to all of us on our way through life without our noticing for a time that they have happened.”

— James M. Barrie

68. “Boy, why are you crying?”

— James M. Barrie

69. “Stars are beautiful, but they must not take an active part in anything, they must just look on forever. It is a punishment put on them for something they did so long ago that no star now knows what it was.”

— James M. Barrie

70. “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.”

— James M. Barrie

71. “Of all the delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. When you play at it by day with the chairs and table-cloth, it is not in the least alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very nearly real. That is why there are night-lights.”

— James M. Barrie

72. “Her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.”

— James M. Barrie

73. “You were hidden behind walls of ice; no man had passed them; I broke them down and love leapt to love, and you lie here, my beautiful, love in the arms of its lover.”

— James M. Barrie

74. “Love is not blind; it is an extra eye, which shows us what is most worthy of regard.”

— James M. Barrie

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

— James M. Barrie

76. “She let her hands play in the hair of the tragic boy. She was not a little girl heart-broken about him; she was a grown woman smiling at it all, but they were wet smiles.”

— James M. Barrie

77. “One’s religion is whatever he is most interested in.”

— James M. Barrie

78. “It may have been quixotic, but it was magnificent.”

— James M. Barrie

79. “It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly.”

— James M. Barrie

80. “Love, it is said, is blind, but love is not blind. It is an extra eye, which shows us what is most worthy of regard. To see the best is to see most clearly, and it is the lover’s privilege.”

— James M. Barrie

81. “But the years came and went without bringing the careless boy; and when they met again Wendy was a married woman, and Peter was no more to her than a little dust in the box in which she had kept her toys.”

— James M. Barrie

82. “She also said she would give him a kiss if he liked, but Peter did not know what she meant, and he held out his hand expectantly.”

— James M. Barrie

83. “For when you looked into my mother’s eyes you knew, as if He had told you, why God sent her into the world – it was to open then minds of all who looked to beautiful thoughts. And that is the beginning and end of literature.”

— James M. Barrie

84. “I don’t want to go to school and learn solemn things. I don’t want to be a man.”

— James M. Barrie

85. “Wise children always choose a mother who was a shocking flirt in her maiden days, and so had several offers before she accepted their fortunate papa.”

— James M. Barrie

86. “How shall we ever know if it’s morning if there’s no servant to pull up the blinds?”

— James M. Barrie

87. “If he thought at all, but I don’t believe he ever thought, it was that he and his shadow, when brought near each other, would join like drops of water...”

— James M. Barrie

88. “What a polite game tennis is. The chief word in it seems to be “sorry” and admiration of each other’s play crosses the net as frequently as the ball.”

— James M. Barrie

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

— James M. Barrie

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

— James M. Barrie

91. “All are keeping a sharp look-out in front, but none suspects that the danger may be creeping up from behind.”

— James M. Barrie

92. “They will find the cake and they will gobble it up, because, having no mother, they don’t know how dangerous ’tis to eat rich damp cake.”

— James M. Barrie

93. “It was because I heard father and mother,′ he explained in a low voice, ‘talking about what I was to be when I became a man.’ He was extraordinarily agitated now. ‘I don’t want ever to be a man,’ he said with passion. ‘I want always to be a little boy and to have fun.”

— James M. Barrie

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

— James M. Barrie

95. “It is a blessing that he did not know, for otherwise he would have lost faith in his power to fly, and the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.”

— James M. Barrie

96. “When you wake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out your prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.”

— James M. Barrie

97. “Oh the gladness of their gladness when they’re glad, And the sadness of their sadness when they’re sad; But the gladness of their gladness, and the sadness of their sadness, Are as nothing to their badness when they’re bad.”

— James M. Barrie

98. “Has it ever struck you that trout bite best on the Sabbath? God’s critters tempting decent men.”

— James M. Barrie

99. “This meal happened to be a make-believe tea, and they sat round the board guzzling in their greed; and really, what with their chatter and recriminations, the noise, as Wendy said, was positively deafening.”

— James M. Barrie

100. “At first Mrs. Darling did not know, but after thinking back into her childhood she just remembered a Peter Pan who was said to live with the fairies. There were odd stories about him, as that when children died he went part of the way with them, so that they should not be frightened.”

— James M. Barrie