The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-4)

by T.H. White

There were magicians in the forest also in those legendary days, as well as strange animals not known to modern works of natural history. There were regular bands of Saxon outlaws—not like Wat—who lived together and wore green and shot with arrows which never missed. There were even a few dragons, though these were small ones, which lived under stones and could hiss like a kettle.

Merlyn took the Wart’s hand and said kindly, “You are young, and do not understand these things. But you will learn that owls are the most courteous, single-hearted and faithful creatures living. You must never be familiar, rude or vulgar with them, or make them look ridiculous. Their mother is Athene, the goddess of wisdom, and, although they are often ready to play the buffoon to amuse you, such conduct is the prerogative of the truly wise. No owl can possibly be called Archie.”

it is not such bad fun being a Cinderella, when you can do it in a kitchen which has a fireplace big enough to roast an ox.” And the Wart looked round the busy kitchen, which was coloured by the flames till it looked like hell, with sorrowful affection.

The Wart walked up to the great sword for the third time. He put out his right hand softly and drew it out as gently as from a scabbard.

“But this is not my sword,” said Sir Kay. “It was the only one I could get,” said the Wart. “The inn was locked.” “It is a nice-looking sword. Where did you get it?” “I found it stuck in a stone, outside a church.”

“Four things,” he whispered, “that a Lothian cannot trust—a cow’s horn, a horse’s hoof, a dog’s snarl, and an Englishman’s laugh.”

“It must be dreadful to have a witch for a mother,” said Gareth when he had finished. “Or for a wife,” said Gawaine. “It’s worse not to be having a wife at all,” said the saint,

“I will tell you something else, King, which may be a surprise for you. It will not happen for hundreds of years, but both of us are to come back. Do you know what is going to be written on your tombstone? Hic jacet Arthurus Rex quondam Rexque futurus. Do you remember your Latin? It means, the once and future king.”

Only, in the long years which bring women to the middle of life, a sense of balance develops. You can’t teach a baby to walk by explaining the matter to her logically—she has to learn the strange poise of walking by experience. In some way like that, you cannot teach a young woman to have knowledge of the world. She has to be left to the experience of the years. And then, when she is beginning to hate her used body, she suddenly finds that she can do it. She can go on living—not by principle, not by deduction, not by knowledge of good and evil, but simply by a peculiar and shifting sense of balance which defies each of these things often. She no longer hopes to live by seeking the truth—if women ever do hope this—but continues henceforth under the guidance of a seventh sense. Balance was the sixth sense, which she won when she first learned to walk, and now she has the seventh one—knowledge of the world.

If people could be persuaded to read and write, not just to eat and make love, there was still a chance that they might come to reason.