Top 200 L. Frank Baum Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “I have heard, my dear friend, that a person can become over-educated; and although I have a high respect for brains, no matter how they may be arranged or classified, I begin to suspect that yours are slightly tangled. In any event, I must beg you to restrain your superior education while in our society.”

— L. Frank Baum

102. “The North Country is purple, and it’s the Country of the Gillikins. The East Country is blue, and that’s the Country of the Munchkins. Down at the South is the red Country of the Quadlings, and here, in the West, the yellow Country of the Winkies.”

— L. Frank Baum

103. “The Tin Woodman knew very well he had no heart, and therefore he took great care never to be cruel or unkind to anything. “You people with hearts,” he said, “have something to guide you, and need never do wrong; but I have no heart, and so I must be very careful.”

— L. Frank Baum

104. “If your heads were stuffed with straw, like mine, you would probably all live in the beautiful places, and then Kansas would have no people at all. It is fortunate for Kansas that you have brains.”

— L. Frank Baum

105. “But nobody can stay alive without getting into danger sometimes, and danger doesn’t mean getting hurt, Cap’n; it only means we might get hurt. So I guess we’ll have to take the risk.”

— L. Frank Baum

106. “With Dorothy hard at work, the.”

— L. Frank Baum

107. “Fortunately money is not known in the Land of Oz at all. We have no rich, and no poor; for what one wishes the others all try to give him, in order to make him happy, and no one in all Oz cares to have more than he can use.”

— L. Frank Baum

108. “No, my head is quite empty,” answered the Woodman. “But once I had brains, and a heart also; so, having tried them both, I should much rather have a heart.”

— L. Frank Baum

109. “The reason most people are bad is because they do not try to be good. Now, the Nome King had never tried to be good, so he was very bad indeed.”

— L. Frank Baum

110. “You’ll be sorry for treating me this way,” whined the Wheeler. “I’m a terribly fierce person.”

— L. Frank Baum

111. “Was Ozma once a boy?” asked Zeb, wonderingly. “Yes; a wicked witch enchanted her, so she could not rule her kingdom. But she’s a girl now, and the sweetest, loveliest girl in all the world.”

— L. Frank Baum

112. “An unsuspected enemy is doubly dangerous.”

— L. Frank Baum

113. “It was a lonely life to lead, for I had nothing to think of, having been made such a little while before.”

— L. Frank Baum

114. “This is all true,” said Dorothy, “and I am glad I was of use to these good friends. But now that each of them has had what he most desired, and each is happy in having a kingdom to rule besides, I think I should like to go back to Kansas.”

— L. Frank Baum

115. “One can be ugly in looks, but lovely in disposition.”

— L. Frank Baum

116. “The Tin Woodman was about to reply when he heard a low growl, and turning.”

— L. Frank Baum

117. “He examined the contents of the closets and selected an elegant suit of clothing. Strangely enough, everything about it was shaggy, although so new and beautiful, and he sighed with contentment to realize that he could now be finely dressed and still be the shaggy man.”

— L. Frank Baum

118. “You began it,” declared Dorothy. “Well, you ended it, so we won’t argue the matter. May we come out again? Or are you still cruel and slappy?”

— L. Frank Baum

119. “That’s all right,” said the Scarecrow. “You are quite welcome to take my head off, as long as it will be a better one when you put it on again.”

— L. Frank Baum

120. “I don’t know enough,” replied the Scarecrow cheerfully. “My head is stuffed with straw, you know, and that is why I am going to Oz to ask him for some brains.” “Oh, I see,” said the Tin Woodman. “But, after all, brains are not the best things in the world.” “Have you any?” inquired the Scarecrow. “No, my head is quite empty,” answered the Woodman. “But once I had brains, and a heart also; so, having tried them both, I should much rather have a heart.”

— L. Frank Baum

121. “If you desire it,” promised the Tin Woodman, leaning back in his tin throne and crossing his tin legs. “I haven’t related my history in a long while, because everyone here knows it nearly as well as I do. But you, being a stranger, are no doubt curious to learn how I became so beautiful and prosperous, so I will recite for your benefit my strange adventures.”

— L. Frank Baum

122. “I never deal in transformations, for they are not honest, and no respectable sorceress likes to make things appear to be what they are not.”

— L. Frank Baum

123. “Scarecrow declared he could see as well as by day. So she took hold of his.”

— L. Frank Baum

124. “To destroy an offender cannot benefit society so much as to redeem him.”

— L. Frank Baum

125. “Finally, were you all like me, I would consider you so common that I would not care to associate with you. To be individual, my friends, to be different from others, is the only way to become distinguished from the common herd. Let us be glad, therefore, that we differ from one another in form and in disposition. Variety is the spice of life, and we are various enough to enjoy one another’s society; so let us be content.”

— L. Frank Baum

126. “Oz, the Great and Terrible.”

— L. Frank Baum

127. “We live in an age of progress,” announced Professor Wogglebug, pompously. “It is easier to swallow knowledge than to acquire it laboriously from books. Is it not so, my friends?” “Some.”

— L. Frank Baum

128. “I think you are a very good tiger,” said Dorothy, patting the huge head of the beast. “In that you are mistaken,” was the reply. “I am a good beast, perhaps, but a disgracefully bad tiger. For it is the nature of tigers to be cruel and ferocious, and in refusing to eat harmless living creatures I am acting as no good tiger has ever before acted. That is why I left the forest and joined my friend the Cowardly Lion.”

— L. Frank Baum

129. “That is all that makes life worth our while – to do good deeds and to help those less fortunate than ourselves.”

— L. Frank Baum

130. “You have; and I’ve restrained a good many of them,” replied the insect. “But there are opportunities for so many excellent puns in our language that, to an educated person like myself, the temptation to express them is almost irresistible.”

— L. Frank Baum

131. “If you only had brains in your head you would be as good a man as any of them, and a better man than some of them.”

— L. Frank Baum

132. “Yet Burzee has its inhabitants – for all this. Nature peopled it in the beginning with Fairies, Knooks, Ryls and Nymphs. As long as the Forest stands it will be a home, a refuge and a playground to these sweet immortals, who revel undisturbed in its depths.”

— L. Frank Baum

133. “Brains are the only things worth having in this world.”

— L. Frank Baum

134. “Scoundrel? We do not call Senhor Valcour that. He is faithful to the Emperor, who employs him. Shall we, who are unfaithful, blame him for his fidelity?”

— L. Frank Baum

135. “Tip thought this strange Army bore no weapons whatever; but in this he was wrong. For each girl had stuck through the knot of her back hair two long, glittering knitting-needles.”

— L. Frank Baum

136. “It was a good fight, friend.”

— L. Frank Baum

137. “Mr. Smith was an art-ist, as well as an in-vent-or, and he paint-ed a pic-ture of a riv-er which was so nat-ur-al that, as he was reach-ing a-cross it to paint some flow-ers on the op-po-site bank, he fell in-to the wa-ter and was drowned.”

— L. Frank Baum

138. “The Emerald City has been ruled by men long enough.”

— L. Frank Baum

139. “But in the course of my wanderings I had the good fortune to save the ninth life of a tailor – tailors having, like cats, nine lives, as you probably know.”

— L. Frank Baum

140. “It’s the finest country in all the world, even if it is a fairyland, and I’m happy every minute I live in it,” said the Shaggy Man.”

— L. Frank Baum

141. “Neither. He’s a – a – a meat dog,” said the girl.”

— L. Frank Baum

142. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Ruggedo melted Tik-Tok in one of his furnaces and made copper pennies of him.” “In that case, I would still keep going,” remarked Tik-Tok, calmly. “Pennies do,” said Betsy regretfully.”

— L. Frank Baum

143. “Please take General Crinkle to the torture chamber. There you will kindly slice him into thin slices. Afterward you may feed him to the seven-headed dogs.”

— L. Frank Baum

144. “How shall we cross the river?”

— L. Frank Baum

145. “Don’t tell anyone I’m a poet; they might want me to write a book. Don’t tell ’em I can sing, or they’d want me to make records for that awful phonograph. Haven’t time to be a public benefactor, so I’ll just sing you this little song for your own amusement.”

— L. Frank Baum

146. “Your mathematics seem to me very like a bottle of mixed pickles the more you fish for what you want the less chance you have of getting it.”

— L. Frank Baum

147. “I suppose I must start my brains working,” replied his Majesty the Scarecrow; “for experience has, taught me that I can do anything if I but take time to think it out.”

— L. Frank Baum

148. “No one knows that, except the person who’s writing this story,” said Shaggy. “But we won’t find anything – not even supper – unless we travel on. Here’s a path. Let’s take it and see where it leads to.”

— L. Frank Baum

149. “There seemed to be no horses nor animals of any kind; the men carried things around in little green carts, which they pushed before them. Everyone seemed happy and contented and prosperous.”

— L. Frank Baum

150. “Exactly so!” declared the little man, rubbing his hands together as if it pleased him. “I am a humbug.” “But.”

— L. Frank Baum