The Princess and Curdie Quotes

“There is this difference between the growth of some human beings and that of others: in the one case it is a continuous dying, in the other a continuous resurrection.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“I don't know how to thank you.'
Then I will tell you. There is only one way I care for. Do better, and grow better, and be better.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“The boy should enclose and keep, as his life, the old child at the heart of him, and never let it go. He must still, to be a right man, be his mother's darling, and more, his father's pride, and more. The child is not meant to die, but to be forever fresh born.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“Could you not give me some sign, or tell me something about you that never changes, or some other way to know you, or thing to know you by?" — "No, Curdie: that would be to keep you from knowing me. You must know me in quite another way from that. It would not be the least use to you or me either if I were to make you know me in that way. It would be but to know the sign of me — not to know me myself.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“Remember, then, that whoever does not mean good is always in danger of harm. But I try to give everybody fair play, and those that are in the wrong are in far more need of it always than those who are in the right: they can afford to do without it.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“There is this difference between the growth of some human beings and that of others:in the one case it is a continuous dying, in the other a continuous resurrection. One of the latter sort comes at length to know at once whether a thing is true the moment it comes before him; one of the former class grows more and more afraid of being taken in, so afraid that he takes himself in altogether, and comes at length to believe in nothing but his dinner: to be sure of a thing is to have it between his teeth.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“Then the great old, young, beautiful princess turned to Curdie.

'Now, Curdie, are you ready?' she said.
'Yes ma'am,' answered Curdie.
'You do not know what for.'
'You do, ma'am. That is enough.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“But it was little to Curdie that men who did not know what he was about should not approve of his proceedings.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“A mountain is a strange and awful thing. In old times, without knowing so much of their strangeness and awfulness as we do, people were yet more afraid of mountains. But then somehow they had not come to see how beautiful they are as well as awful, and they hated them--and what people hate they must fear. Now that we have learned to look at them with admiration, perhaps we do not feel quite awe enough of them. To me they are beautiful terrors.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“I was doing the wrong of never wanting or trying to better. And now I see that I have been letting things go as the would for a long time. Whatever came into my head I did and whatever didn’t come into my head I didn’t do.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“They [mountains] are portions of the heart of the earth that have escaped from the dungeon down below, and rushed up and out. For the heart of the earth is a great wallowing mass, not of blood, as in the hearts of men and animals, but of glowing hot melted metals and stones. And as our hearts keep us alive, so that great lump of heat keeps the earth alive: it is a huge power of buried sunlight—that is what it is. Now think: out of that caldron, where all the bubbles would be as big as the Alps if it could get room for its boiling, certain bubbles have bubbled out and escaped—up and away, and there they stand in the cool, cold sky—mountains. Think of the change, and you will no more wonder that there should be something awful about the very look of a mountain: from the darkness—for where the light has nothing to shine upon, it is much the same as darkness—from the heat, from the endless tumult of boiling unrest—up, with a sudden heavenward shoot, into the wind, and the cold, and the starshine, and a cloak of snow that lies like ermine above the blue-green mail of the glaciers; and the great sun, their grandfather, up there in the sky; and their little old cold aunt, the moon, that comes wandering about the house at night; and everlasting stillness, except for the wind that turns the rocks and caverns into a roaring organ for the young archangels that are studying how to let out the pent-up praises of their hearts, and the molten music of the streams, rushing ever from the bosoms of the glaciers fresh-born. Think too of the change in their own substance—no longer molten and soft, heaving and glowing, but hard and shining and cold. Think of the creatures scampering over and burrowing in it, and the birds building their nests upon it, and the trees growing out of its sides, like hair to clothe it, and the lovely grass in the valleys, and the gracious flowers even at the very edge of its armour of ice, like the rich embroidery of the garment below, and the rivers galloping down the valleys in a tumult of white and green! And along with all these, think of the terrible precipices down which the traveller may fall and be lost, and the frightful gulfs of blue air cracked in the glaciers, and the dark profound lakes, covered like little arctic oceans with floating lumps of ice. All this outside the mountain! But the inside, who shall tell what lies there? Caverns of awfullest solitude, their walls miles thick, sparkling with ores of gold or silver, copper or iron, tin or mercury, studded perhaps with precious stones—perhaps a brook, with eyeless fish in it, running, running ceaseless, cold and babbling, through banks crusted with carbuncles and golden topazes, or over a gravel of which some of the stones are rubies and emeralds, perhaps diamonds and sapphires—who can tell?—and whoever can't tell is free to think—all waiting to flash, waiting for millions of ages—ever since the earth flew off from the sun, a great blot of fire, and began to cool. Then there are caverns full of water, numbing cold, fiercely hot—hotter than any boiling water. From some of these the water cannot get out, and from others it runs in channels as the blood in the body: little veins bring it down from the ice above into the great caverns of the mountain's heart, whence the arteries let it out again, gushing in pipes and clefts and ducts of all shapes and kinds, through and through its bulk, until it springs newborn to the light, and rushes down the mountain side in torrents, and down the valleys in rivers—down, down, rejoicing, to the mighty lungs of the world, that is the sea, where it is tossed in storms and cyclones, heaved up in billows, twisted in waterspouts, dashed to mist upon rocks, beaten by millions of tails, and breathed by millions of gills, whence at last, melted into vapour by the sun, it is lifted up pure into the air, and borne by the servant winds back to the mountain tops and the snow, the solid ice, and the molten stream.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“Love makes all safe.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“He had come to think that so long as a man wants to do right he may go where he can: when he can go no further, then it is not the way.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“There is this difference between the growth of some human beings and that of others: in the one case it a continuous dying, in the other a continuous resurrection.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“It is a great privilege to be poor, Peter. You must not mistake, however, and imagine it a virtue; it is but a privilege, and one also that may be terribly misused.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“Remember, then, that whoever does not mean good is always in danger of harm.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“the road to the next duty is the only straight one,”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“The stars are spinning their threads,
And the clouds are the dust that flies,
And the suns are weaving them up
For the time when the sleepers shall rise.
The ocean in music rolls,
And gems are turning to eyes,
And the trees are gathering souls
For the day when the sleepers shall rise.
The weepers are learning to smile,
And laughter to glean the sighs;
Burn and bury the care and guile,
For the day when the sleepers shall rise.
Oh, the dews and the moths and the daisy red,
The larks and the glimmers and flows!
The lilies and sparrows and daily bread,
And the something that nobody knows!”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“whoever is diligent will soon be cheerful,”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“Where there is no truth there can be no faith.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald: Illustrated Edition with Author Biography

“You say you didn't mean any harm: did you mean any good, Curdie?”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“Nothing that could be got from the heart of the earth could have been put to better purposes than the silver the king's miners got for him. There were people in the country who, when it came into their hands, degraded it by locking it up in a chest, and then it grew diseased and was called mammon, and bred all sorts of quarrels; but when first it left the king's hands it never made any but friends, and the air of the world kept it clean.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“As Curdie grew, he grew at this time faster in body than in mind—with the usual consequence, that he was getting rather stupid—one of the chief signs of which was that he believed less and less in things he had never seen. ... On his way to and from the mine he took less and less notice of bees and butterflies, moths and dragonflies, the flowers and the brooks and the clouds. He was gradually changing into a commonplace man.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and the Curdie

“Then there are caverns full of water, numbingly cold, fiercely hot—hotter than any boiling water. From some of these the water cannot get out, and from others it runs in channels as the blood in the body: little veins bring it down from the ice above into the great caverns of the mountain's heart, whence the arteries let it out again, gushing in pipes and clefts and ducts of all shapes and kinds, through and through its bulk, until it springs newborn to the light, and rushes down the Mountainside in torrents, and down the valleys in rivers—down, down, rejoicing, to the mighty lungs of the world, that is the sea, where it is tossed in storms and cyclones, heaved up in billows, twisted in waterspouts, dashed to mist upon rocks, beaten by millions of tails, and breathed by millions of gills, whence at last, melted into vapour by the sun, it is lifted up pure into the air, and borne by the servant winds back to the mountaintops and the snow, the solid ice, and the molten stream.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“There were people in the country who, when it came into their hands, degraded it by locking it up in a chest, and then it grew diseased and was called mammon, and bred all sorts of quarrels; but when first it left the king's hands it never made any but friends, and the air of the world kept it clean.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“There is a difference in the growth of some human beings and that of others: in the one case it is a continuous dying, in the other a continuous resurrection.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“But whoever is diligent will soon be cheerful,”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“The truth Fear tells is not much better than her lies.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“...for he had come to think that so long as a man wants to do right he may go where he can: when he can go no further, then it is not the way.

'Only,' said his father, in assenting to the theory, 'he must really want to do right, and not merely fancy he does. He must want it with his heart and will, and not with his rag of a tongue.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

“I don't know how to thank you.

Then I will tell you. There is only one way I care for. Do better, and grow better, and be better.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie