Quotes referring to Fairies:

 

William Butler Yeats--"The land of fairy, where nobody gets old and godly and grave, where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue."

Andrew Lang--"Of all the minor creatures of mythology, fairies are the most beautiful, the most numerous, the most memorable."

Robert Louis Stevenson--"... every child can remember laying his head in the grass, staring into the infinitesimal forest and seeing it grow populous with fairy armies ..."

Seumus O'Sullivan--"From gray woods they come, on silent feet Into a cone of light. A lifting note, O fair! O fleet! There the night through We take out pleasure, Dancing to such a measure As earth never knew."

John Seldon--"There never was a merry world since the fairies left off dancing. . ."

Douglas Jerrold (Specimens of Jerrold's Wit--Fairy Tales)--"Nothing can be truer than fairy wisdom. It is as true as sunbeams."

William Makepeace Thackeray--"Fairy roses, fairy rings, turn out sometimes troublesome things."

James Matthew Barrie (Peter, in Peter Pan, act 1)--"When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. And now when every new baby is born its first laugh becomes a fairy. So there ought to be one fairy for every boy or girl."

James Matthew Barrie (Peter, in Peter Pan, act 1)--"Every time a child says, 'I don't believe in fairies,' there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead. "

James Matthew Barrie (Peter Pan, Chapter 17)--"...because you see 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. They live in nests on the tops of trees; and the mauve ones are boys and the white ones are girls, and the blue ones are just little sillies who are not sure what they are."

James Matthew Barrie (Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens)--"They hold their great balls in the open air, in what is called a fairy-ring. For weeks afterward you can see the ring on the grass. It is not there when they begin, but they make it by waltzing round and round. Sometimes you will find mushrooms inside the ring, and these are fairy chairs that the servants have forgotten to clear away. The chairs and the rings are the only tell-tale marks these little people leave behind them, and they would remove even these were they not so fond of dancing that they toe it till the very moment of the opening of the gates."

Mark Twain (Interview in Seattle Star, Nov. 30, 1905, p. 8)--"The longing of my heart is a fairy portrait of myself: I want to be pretty; I want to eliminate facts and fill up the gap with charms."

Eleanor Roosevelt--"I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity."

Tori Amos--"We are all fairies living underneath a leaf of a lily pad."

Unknown--"Each fairy breath of summer, as it blows with loveliness, inspires the blushing rose."

William Collins--"By fairy hands their knell is rung; / By forms unseen their dirge is sung."

Hans Christian Anderson--"Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale."

Charles Kingsley (The Water Babies, Ch. 5)--"The loveliest fairy in the world; and her name is Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby."

Polly McGuire--"Stories are like fairy gold, the more you give away, the more you have."

Unknown--"The rustle of the wind reminds us a Fairy is near."

William Butler Yeats--"Come faeries, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame."

John Milton (Paradise Regained, Bk ii. 359)--"Fairy damsels met in forest wide / By knights of Logres, or of Lyones, / Lancelot or Pelleas, or Pellenore."

John Milton (Paradise Lost, Bk i. 781)--"Fairy elves, / Whose midnight revels, by a forest side / Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, / Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon / Sits arbitress."

Percy Montrose (Clementine)--"Light she was and like a fairy. / And her shoes were number nine; / Herring boxes without topses, / Sandals were for Clementine."

Torlila--"Many people don't believe in faeries, but if you look real close they're always there."

J. B. Morton (The Best of Beachcomber 12, 'The Saga of the Saucy Mrs Flobster: The Dancing Cabman')--"To fairy flutes, / As the light advances, / In square black boots / The cabman dances."

Homer (Iliad, B. xxiv. 617.)--"Where round the bed, whence Achelous springs, That wat'ry Fairies dance in mazy rings."

(The Wisdom of Dr. Dodypoll, 1660)--"'Twas I that led you through the painted mead. / Where the light fairies danced upon the flowers / Hanging from every leaf an orient pearl."

Dan Fogelberg Scarecrow's Dream--"Between the worlds of men and make believe I can be found."

Lynn Holland--"Fairies are invisible and inaudible like angels. But their magic sparkles in nature."

Unknown--"Wind chimes in your yard will serenade garden creatures...squirrels, fairies and angels."

Unknown--"The woods are full of fairies! The trees are alive: The river overflows with them. See how they dip and dive! What funny little fellows! What dainty little dears! They dance and leap, and prance and peep, And utter fairy cheers! "

P.G. Wodehouse--"She's one of those soppy girls, riddled from head to foot with whimsy. She holds the view that the stars are God's daisy chain, that rabbits are gnomes in attendance on the Fairy Queen, and that every time a fairy blows its wee nose a baby is born, which, as we know, is not the case. She's a drooper."

Mrs. C. B. Wilson (What Fairy-Like Music)--"What fairy-like music steals over the sea, Entrancing our senses with charmed melody?"

Charles Ede--"Take the fair face of woman, and gently suspending, with butterflies, flowers, and jewels attending, thus your fairy is made of most beautiful things"

Labyrinth--"It bit me! ; What did you expect faeries to do? ; I thought they did nice things like granting wishes. ; Shows what you know don't it."

Unknown--"Where you believe there is magic...you will find it."

The Voyage of the Bassett--"More magical than I had dreamed, and more varied. Some are as small as flowers, some as tall as I, and all sizes between but all seem to exist as a celebration of nature's enchantment. "

Ida Rentoul Outhwaite--"Then clear on a flute of purest gold / A sweet little fairy played. / And wonderful fairy tales she told and marvelous music made. "

J.R.R. Tolkein--"Faerie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary, and dungeons for the overbold."

Unknown--And as the season come and go, here's something you might like to know ... there are fairies everywhere under bushes, in the air, playing games just like you play, singing through their busy day. So listen, touch, and look around -- in the air and on the ground. And if you watch all nature's things, you might just see a fairy's wing."

William Allingham--"Fairies, arouse! / Mix with your song / Harplet and pipe, / Thrilling and clear, / Swarm on the boughs! / Chant in a throng! / Morning is ripe, / Waiting to hear."

Unknown--"Upon the shore a mermaid fair, with shimmering seashells in her hair, whispers a secret from the deep, and gently lulls me off to sleep."

Florence Harrison--"And they are elfin manners / Who stand at prow and helm; / By mortal eye unseen, they hie / From many an airy realm."

Unknown--"The Faeries went from the world, dear, because men's hearts grow cold, and only the eyes of the children see what is hidden from the old and only the magic of love, dear, can ever turn the key that unlocks the gates of Fae and set the Sidhe free."

Christopher Morley--"The little Plumpuppets are fairies of beds: / They have nothing to do but watch sleepy heads: / They turn down the sheets and they tuck you in tight: / And they dance on your pillow to wish you good night!"

Unknown--"By the moon, we sport and play, with the night begins our day."

Samuel Smiles--"If we opened our minds to enjoyment, we might find tranquil pleasures spread about us on every side. We might live with the angels that visit us on every sunbeam, and sit with the fairies who wait on every flower."

Rose Fyleman--"There are fairies at the bottom of our garden."

Ida Rentoul Outhwaite--"The wall is silence, the grass is sleep, / Tall trees of peace their vigil keep, / And the Fairy of Dreams with moth-wings furled. / Plays soft on her flute to the drowsy world."

Richard Dawkins--"There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?"

Unknown--"Garden fairies come at dawn, Bless the flowers then they're gone."

Charles de Lint--"We call them faerie. / We don't believe in them. / Our loss."

Ephraim Gotthold Lessing, Nathan der Weise (III, 6)--"It is not children only that one feeds with fairy tales."

Unknown--"Once upon an enchanted evening, fireflies danced, and fairies made wishes come true..."

Charles de Lint--"Like legend and myth, magic fades when it is unused -- hence all the old tales of elfin kingdoms moving further and further away from our world, or that magical beings require our faith, our belief in their existence, to survive.
That is a lie. All they require is our recognition."

John Lennon--"I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now? Reality leaves a lot to the imagination."

Alexander Pope--"The dances ended, all the fairy train / For pinks and daisies search'd the flow'ry plain."

Charles de Lint--"It's easy to believe in magic when you're young. Anything you couldn't explain was magic then. It didn't matter if it was science or a fairy tale. Electricity and elves were both infinitely mysterious and equally possible -- elves probably more so."

William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor (Falstaff at V, v)--"They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die. / I'll wink and couch; no man their works must eye."

William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (Titania at II, i)--"Set your heart at rest. / The fairyland buys not the child of me."

Ralph Waldo Emerson--A lady with whom I was riding in the forest said to me that the woods always seemed to her to wait, as if the genii who inhabit them suspend their deeds until the wayfarer had passed onward; a thought which poetry has celebrated in the dance of the fairies, which breaks off on the approach of human feet.

Charles de Lint--"The fey wonders of the world only exist while there are those with the sight to see them."

Margaret Fuller--But the golden-rod is one of the fairy, magical flowers; it grows not up to seek human love amid the light of day, but to mark to the discerning what wealth lies hid in the secret caves of earth.

Richard Dawkins--"There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?"

Brian Froud and Alan Lee, Preface of Faeries--"The myths and legends about Faerie are many and diverse, and often contradictory. Only one thing is certain - that nothing is certain. All things are possible in the land of Faerie."

Francis Thompson--"Know you what it is to be a child?...It is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear, it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its soul."

Tori Amos--"I think that people who can't believe in faeries aren't worth knowing.  I just think that alternate realities make you a good writer. If your work is any more than one dimension, you believe in faeries."

William Shakespeare, (of Queen Mab) in Romeo and Juliet--"She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes in shape no bigger than an agate stone on the forefinger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies athwart men's noses as they lie asleep."

Unknown--"Everytime a new story is told, a faery is born"