Top 280 James M. Barrie Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The man who is in real danger is the man who thinks he is perfectly safe.”

— James M. Barrie

52. “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

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

— James M. Barrie

54. “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

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

— James M. Barrie

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

— James M. Barrie

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

— James M. Barrie

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

— James M. Barrie

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

— James M. Barrie

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

— 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. “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

67. “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

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

— James M. Barrie

69. “Boy, why are you crying?”

— 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. “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

72. “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

73. “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

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

— James M. Barrie

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

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

— James M. Barrie

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

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

— James M. Barrie

82. “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

83. “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

84. “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

85. “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

86. “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

87. “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

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

— James M. Barrie

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

— James M. Barrie

90. “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

91. “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

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

— James M. Barrie

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

— James M. Barrie

94. “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

95. “Dreams do come true, if we only wish hard enough.”

— James M. Barrie

96. “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

97. “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

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

— James M. Barrie

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

— James M. Barrie

100. “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