The Princess and the Goblin (Princess Irene and Curdie, #1)

by George MacDonald

you can't get tired of a thing before you have it.

she had lost herself long ago. It doesn't follow that she was lost, because she had lost herself, though.

a real princess cannot tell a lie.

a real princess is never rude—even

this day was so like the last that it would have been difficult to tell where was the use of It.

a princess must not break her word,'

a princess never forgets her debts until they are paid.

Some little girls would have been afraid to find themselves thus alone in the middle of the night, but Irene was a princess.

but that is the way fear serves us: it always sides with the thing we are afraid of.

It is when people do wrong things wilfully that they are the more likely to do them again.

it is so silly of people to fancy that old age means crookedness and witheredness and feebleness and sticks and spectacles and rheumatism and forgetfulness! It is so silly! Old age has nothing whatever to do with all that. The right old age means strength and beauty and mirth and courage and clear eyes and strong painless limbs.

'Then you must believe without seeing,' said the princess; 'for you can't deny it has brought us out of the mountain.'

'People must believe what they can, and those who believe more must not be hard upon those who believe less. I doubt if you would have believed it all yourself if you hadn't seen some of it.'

Seeing is not believing—it is only seeing.

We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary.' 'What is that, grandmother?' 'To understand other people.'

the truest princess is just the one who loves all her brothers and sisters best, and who is most able to do them good by being humble towards them.

Here I should like to remark, for the sake of princes and princesses in general, that it is a low and contemptible thing to refuse to confess a fault, or even an error. If a true princess has done wrong, she is always uneasy until she has had an opportunity of throwing the wrongness away from her by saying: 'I did it; and I wish I had not; and I am sorry for having done it.' So you see there is some ground for supposing that Curdie was not a miner only, but a prince as well. Many such instances have been known in the world's history.