The Water Babies Quotes

“The most wonderful and the strongest things in the world, you know, are just the things which no one can see.”
― Charles Kingsley, The Water-Babies

“Did not learned men, too, hold, till within the last twenty-five years, that a flying dragon was an impossible monster? And do we not now know that there are hundreds of them found fossil up and down the world? People call them Pterodactyles: but that is only because they are ashamed to call them flying dragons, after denying so long that flying dragons could exist.”
― Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies

“In fact, the fairies had turned him into a water-baby.
A water-baby?  You never heard of a water-baby.  Perhaps not.  That is the very reason why this story was written. 
(...)
"But there are no such things as water-babies."
How do you know that?  Have you been there to see?  And if you had been there to see, and had seen none, that would not prove that there were none.  If Mr. Garth does not find a fox in Eversley Wood—as folks sometimes fear he never will—that does not prove that there are no such things as foxes.  And as is Eversley Wood to all the woods in England, so are the waters we know to all the waters in the world.  And no one has a right to say that no water-babies exist, till they have seen no water-babies existing; which is quite a different thing, mind, from not seeing water-babies; and a thing which nobody ever did, or perhaps ever will do.”
― Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies: A Fairy Tale For A Land Baby

“Do as you would be done by.”
― Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies

“[...] his little whirl-about of a head was so full of the notion of going out to see the world, that it forgot her in five minutes: however, though his head forgot her, I am glad to say his heart did not.”
― Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies

“Oh, don’t hurt me!” cried Tom. “I only want to look at you; you are so handsome.”
― Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies

“And what was the song which she sang? Ah, my little man, I am too old to sing that song, and you too young to understand it.”
― Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies