The Last Unicorn Quotes

“song of elli (old age)

"What is plucked will grow again,
What is slain lives on,
What is stolen will remain
What is gone is gone...
What is sea-born dies on land,
Soft is trod upon.
What is given burns the hand -
What is gone is gone...
Here is there, and high is low;
All may be undone.
What is true, no two men know -
What is gone is gone...
Who has choices need not choose.
We must, who have none.
We can love but what we lose -
What is gone is gone.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“The last unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“My people are in the world again. No sorrow will live in me as long as that joy‌—‌save one, and I thank you for that, too.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“But the important thing is for you to understand that it doesn't matter whether the clock strikes ten next, or fifteen o'clock. You can strike your own time, and start the count anywhere. When you can understand that -- then any time at all will be the right time for you.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“I was born mortal, and I have been immortal for a long, foolish time, and one day I will be mortal again; so I know something that a unicorn cannot know. Whatever can die is beautiful--more beautiful than a unicorn, who lives forever, and who is the most beautiful creature in the world.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“Schmendrick smiled then. "I'm no man," he said. "I'm a magician with no magic, and that's no one at all.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“Unicorn. Old french, unicorne. Latin ūnicornis. Literally one horned. Unus one and cornu a horn. A fabulous animal resembling a horse with one horn. Visible only to those who search and trust and generally mistaken for a white mare. Unicorn.”
― The Wise Butterfly

“But the Lady Amalthea and Prince Lir walked and spoke and sang together as blithely as though King Haggard's castle had become a green wood, wild and shadowy with spring. They climbed the crooked towers like hills, picnicked in stone meadows under a stone sky, and splashed up and down stairways that had softened and quickened into streams.”
― Peter S. Beagle

“I’ve never really understood,” the unicorn mused as the man picked himself up, “what you dream of doing with me, once you’ve caught me.” The man leaped again, and she slipped away from him like rain. “I don’t think you know yourselves,” she said.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“I will tell you a story," Schmendrick said. "As a child I was apprenticed to the mightiest magician of all, the great Nikos, whom I have spoken of before. But even Nikos, who could turn cats into cattle, snowflakes into snowdrops, and unicorns into men, could not change me into so much as a carnival cardsharp. A last he said to me, 'My son, your ineptitude is so vast, your incompetence so profound, that I am certain you are inhabited by greater power than I have ever known. Unfortunately, it seems to work backwards at the moment, and even I can find no way to set it right. It must be that you are meant to find your own way to reach your power in time; but frankly, you should live so long as that will take you. Therefore I grant it that you shall not age from this day forth, but will travel the world round and round, eternally inefficient, until at last you come to yourself and know what you are. Don't thank me. I tremble at your doom.”
― Peter Beagle

“At last he said to me, 'My son, your ineptitude is so vast, your incompetence so profound, that I am certain you are inhabited by greater power than I have ever known.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“The magician did him no service, but great ill... how terrible it would be if all my people had been turned human by well-meaning wizards—exiled, trapped in burning houses. I would sooner find that the Red Bull had killed them all.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“One good woman more in the world is worth every single unicorn gone.”
― Peter S. Beagle

“It’s really not so good to have time. Rush, scramble, desperation, this missed, that left behind, those others too big to fit into such a small space‌—‌that’s the way life was meant to be. You’re supposed to be too late for some things. Don’t worry about it.”
― Peter S Beagle, The Last Unicorn #1