Andrew Lang > Quotes

“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination.”
― Andrew Lang

“Young men, especially in America, write to me and ask me to recommend “a course of reading.” Distrust a course of reading! People who really care for books read all of them. There is no other course.”
― Andrew Lang, Adventures Among Books

“You can cover a great deal of country in books. ”
― Andrew Lang

“O grant me a house by the beach of a bay,
Where the waves can be surly in winter, and play
With the sea-weed in summer, ye bountiful powers!
And I'd leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray,
For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.”
― Andrew Lang

“Most people use statistics like a drunk man uses a lamppost; more for support than illumination”
― Andrew Lang

“...remember that the danger that is most to be feared is never the danger we are most afraid of.”
― Andrew Lang, The Red Fairy Book

“In the old stories, despite the impossibility of the incidents, the interest is always real and human.  The princes and princesses fall in love and marry--nothing could be more human than that.  Their lives and loves are crossed by human sorrows...The hero and heroine are persecuted or separated by cruel stepmothers or enchanters; they have wanderings and sorrows to suffer; they have adventures to achieve and difficulties to overcome; they must display courage, loyalty and address, courtesy, gentleness and gratitude.  Thus they are living in a real human world, though it wears a mythical face, though there are giants and lions in the way.  The old fairy tales which a silly sort of people disparage as too wicked and ferocious for the nursery, are really 'full of matter,' and unobtrusively teach the true lessons of our wayfaring in a world of perplexities and obstructions.”
― Andrew Lang

“Why should I laugh?' asked the old man. 'Madness in youth is true wisdom. Go, young man, follow your dream, and if you do not find the happiness that you seek, at any rate you will have had the happiness of seeking it.”
― Andrew Lang, The Red Fairy Book

“Madame d'Aulnoy is the true mother of the modern fairy tale. She invented the modern Court of Fairyland, with its manners, its fairies, its queens, its amorous, its cruel, its good, its evil, its odious, its friendly fées.”
― Andrew Lang, The Rose Fairy Book

“One gift the fairies gave me ... the love of books, the magic key that opens the enchanted door.”
― Andrew Lang, Ballades & Rhymes: From Ballades in Blue China and Rhymes & a la Mode

“I fear nothing when I am doing right,' said Jack.
'Then,' said the lady in the red cap, 'you are one of those who slay giants.”
― Andrew Lang, The Red Fairy Book

“Again, if there are really no fairies, why do people believe in them, all over the world? The ancient Greeks believed, so did the old Egyptians, and the Hindoos, and the Red Indians, and is it likely, if there are no fairies, that so many different peoples would have seen and heard them?”
― Andrew Lang, The Yellow Fairy Book

“Here stand my books, line upon line
They reach the roof, and row by row,
They speak of faded tastes of mine,
And things I did, but do not, know.”
― Andrew Lang

“In literature, as in love, one can only speak for himself.”
― Andrew Lang

“So labour at your Alphabet,
For by that learning shall you get
To lands where Fairies may be met.”
― Andrew Lang, The Blue Fairy Book

“If there are frightful monsters in fairy tales, they do not frighten you now, because that kind of monster is no longer going about the world, whatever he may have done long, long ago. He has been turned into stone, and you may see his remains in museums.”
― Andrew Lang, The Green Fairy Book

“To the enormous majority of persons who risk themselves in literature, not even the smallest measure of success can fall. They had better take to some other profession as quickly as may be, they are only making a sure thing of disappointment, only crowding the narrow gates of fortune and fame. Yet there are others to whom success, though easily within their reach, does not seem a thing to be grasped at. Of two such, the pathetic story may be read, in the Memoir of A Scotch Probationer, Mr. Thomas Davidson, who died young, an unplaced Minister of the United Presbyterian Church, in 1869. He died young, unaccepted by the world, unheard of, uncomplaining, soon after writing his latest song on the first grey hairs of the lady whom he loved. And she, Miss Alison Dunlop, died also, a year ago, leaving a little work newly published, Anent Old Edinburgh, in which is briefly told the story of her life. There can hardly be a true tale more brave and honourable, for those two were eminently qualified to shine, with a clear and modest radiance, in letters. Both had a touch of poetry, Mr. Davidson left a few genuine poems, both had humour, knowledge, patience, industry, and literary conscientiousness. No success came to them, they did not even seek it, though it was easily within the reach of their powers. Yet none can call them failures, leaving, as they did, the fragrance of honourable and uncomplaining lives, and such brief records of these as to delight, and console and encourage us all. They bequeath to us the spectacle of a real triumph far beyond the petty gains of money or of applause, the spectacle of lives made happy by literature, unvexed by notoriety, unfretted by envy. What we call success could never have yielded them so much, for the ways of authorship are dusty and stony, and the stones are only too handy for throwing at the few that, deservedly or undeservedly, make a name, and therewith about one-tenth of the wealth which is ungrudged to physicians, or barristers, or stock-brokers, or dentists, or electricians. If literature and occupation with letters were not its own reward, truly they who seem to succeed might envy those who fail. It is not wealth that they win, as fortunate men in other professions count wealth; it is not rank nor fashion that come to their call nor come to call on them. Their success is to be let dwell with their own fancies, or with the imaginations of others far greater than themselves; their success is this living in fantasy, a little remote from the hubbub and the contests of the world. At the best they will be vexed by curious eyes and idle tongues, at the best they will die not rich in this world’s goods, yet not unconsoled by the friendships which they win among men and women whose faces they will never see. They may well be content, and thrice content, with their lot, yet it is not a lot which should provoke envy, nor be coveted by ambition.”
― Andrew Lang, How to Fail in Literature: A Lecture

“It is so delightful to teach those one loves!”
― Andrew Lang, The Red Fairy Book

“...she has been bewitched by a wicked sorceress, and will not regain her beauty until she is my wife.'
'Does she say so? Well if you believe that you may drink cold water and think it bacon'.”
― Andrew Lang, The Red Fairy Book

“much is gained by patience,”
― Andrew Lang, The Arabian Nights

“And then they lived happily, and we who hear the story are happier still.”
― Andrew Lang

“For, as I told you, Good deeds bear their own fruit!”
― Andrew Lang, The Orange Fairy Book

“Letters from the first were planned to guide us into Fairy Land.”
― Andrew Lang, The Yellow Fairy Book

“The advantage of possessing a great empire is not to be able to do the evil that one desires, but to do all the good that one possibly can.”
― Andrew Lang, The Blue Fairy Book

“And he married the Echo one fortunate morn,
And Woman, their beautiful daughter, was born!
The daughter of Sunshine and Echo she came
With a voice like a song, with a face like a flame;
With a face like a flame, and a voice like a song,
And happy was Man, but it was not for long!
For weather's a painfully changeable thing,
Not always the child of the Echo would sing;
And the face of the Sun may be hidden with mist,
And his child can be terribly cross if she list.
And unfortunate man had to learn with surprise
That a frown's not peculiar to masculine eyes;
That the sweetest of voices can scold and sneer,
And cannot be answered - like men - with a spear”
― Andrew Lang, Ballads in Blue China / Verses and Translations

“Now that reading and writing are universal accomplishments, books are not bought so freely as they were about 1820. . . . [I]n fact, book-buying does not increase in proportion with the power of reading printed matter. People prefer periodical trash, snippets of twaddle.
[February 1894, editor's introduction to Dana Estes & Company's The Betrothed, by Sir Walter Scott]”
― Andrew Lang

“Unfortunate king,” said the Sultan, “I will do what I can to avenge you.”
― Andrew Lang, The Arabian Nights

“But the three hundred and sixty-five authors who try to write new fairy tales are very tiresome. They always begin with a little boy or girl who goes out and meets the fairies of polyanthuses and gardenias and apple blossoms: 'Flowers and fruits, and other winged things.' These fairies try to be funny, and fail; or they try to preach, and succeed.”
― Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book

“My dear Prince, might I beg you to move a little more that way, for your nose casts such a shadow that I really cannot see what I have on my plate”
― Andrew Lang, The Blue Fairy Book

“there are many out-of-the-way things it is as well to know, but one should never boast of them.”
― Andrew Lang, The Arabian Nights