Bedtime Tales Quotes

If they who are appointed to instruct and rule over men had wisdom and virtue themselves, realities, and not fantasies, would enable them to govern better; but scoundrels, quacksalvers, ambitious ruffians, or low sneaks, the lawgivers have ever found it easier to lull nations to sleep with bedtime tales than to teach truths to the public, than to develop intelligence in the population, than to encourage men to virtue by making it worthwhile for sound and palpable reasons, than, in short, to govern them in a logical manner. ~ Marquis De Sade

Lots of children I know are excited to grow up. So I wonder why this man was so happy to become young again? ~ Sara Rich

I have a daughter, Hanna, and I never read fairy tales to her. But I did tell her bedtime tales and made up many tales involving 'Gory the Goblin' and other creatures that I borrowed from the Grimms' tales and other tales I knew. ~ Jack Zipes

Now I lay me down to sleep upon my pillow fluffed up so deep my dreams will take me far away to the land all children play when I wake with that new yawn shortly after the new dawn I'll try to have the best day I can until I return to my dream land ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

Believe me when I tell you that there is no lie quite so obvious as the one where you try to protest that you have washed your face ready for bedtime while you are still sporting an enormous ear-to-ear purple smile of dried Ribena. ~ Nigel Slater

We have, each of us, a story that is uniquely ours, a narrative arc that we can walk with purpose once we figure out what it is. It's the opposite to living our lives episodically, where each day is only tangentially connected to the next, where we are ourselves the only constants linking yesterday to tomorrow. There is nothing wrong with that, and I don't want to imply that there is by saying how much this shocked me
just that it felt so suddenly, painfully right to think that I have tapped into my Long Tale, that I have set my feet on the path I want to walk the rest of my life, and that it is a path of stories and writing and that no matter how many oceans I cross or how transient I feel in any given place, I am still on my Tale's Road, because having tapped it, having found it, the following is inevitable ... ~ Amal El-Mohtar

The tales of my life have become many lately, but I have no one to share them with. And so they fill up my mind, taking up every inch of my being, congesting my airways until one day I'll stop breathing. ~ Tina Masatu

A drink is shorter than a tale ~ Omar Khayyam

That's what we do, man, we're like storytellers. We tell you stories from the streets. Whether we did it before when we was young or we heard it from one of the homies telling us a tale of what he been through. It's all in having fun and creating a movie like vibe to tell a tale from the streets. ~ Kurupt

Let's be detectives when we grow up," suggested Douglas.
" No," said William. " It's more fun bein' the man that comes along an' finds out all about it when the detectives have stopped tryin'. I'm goin to be one of that sort. I'm goin' to go on readin' myst'ry tales all the time from now till I'm grown up an' then I bet there won't be any way of killin' folks that I won't know all about so I'll be able to catch all the murd'rers there are an' I bet I'll be famous an' they'll put up a stachoo to me when I'm dead."
" I bet they won't," said Ginger, irritated by William's egotism. " You'll prob'ly get murdered yourself before you've tound out anythin' at all an' then Douglas an' Henry an' me' 11 find out who did it an' get famous. ~ Richmal Crompton

Holidays are also an opportunity for kids to unlearn every good habit they've learned during the rest of the year. They don't go to school. They get to stay up past their bedtime. They get candy and presents for doing nothing. Childhood utopia. ~ Jim Gaffigan

Bob had been caught by the white death, the threat of which hung over every male black in the South. I had heard whispered tales of black boys having sex relations with white prostitutes in the hotels in town, but I had never paid any close attention to them; now those tales came home to me in the form of the death of a man I knew. I did not search for a job that day; I returned home ~ Richard Wright

Writing is writing to me. I'm incapable of saying no to any writing job, so I've done everything - historical fiction, myths, fairy tales, anything that anybody expresses any interest in me writing, I'll write. It's the same reason I used to read as a child: I like going somewhere else and being someone else. ~ Geraldine McCaughrean

We can't give you any further information," the fairies replied. "Be satisfied, madam, with the assurance that your daughter will be happy." She thanked them very much and did not forget to give them many presents. Although the fairies were quite rich, they always liked people to give them something. Throughout the world this custom has been passed down from that day to our own, and time has not altered it in the least.

("Green Serpent") ~ Marie-Catherine D'Aulnoy

People would rather believe in fairy godmothers and divine intervention than to think that you took charge of your own destiny. ~ Margaret Peterson Haddix

A gang of unpredictable ruffians by day who turned to enthralling storytellers after dark. I would sometimes join them, and listen for a great part of the night to some of the finest fairy tales and most romantic legends it has ever been my fortune to hear. ~ Russell S. Bonds

Whether this tale be true or false, none can tell, for none were there to witness it themselves. ~ Marjane Satrapi

I want to talk about political and economic fairy tales. ~ Ronald Reagan

Witch. The word drifted across his mind. We call such women so, because we have no other name. ~ Katherine Arden

Heart of my heart, we are one with the wind,
One with the clouds that are whirled o'er the lea,
One in many, O broken and blind,
One as the waves are at one with the sea!
Ay! when life seems scattered apart,
Darkens, ends as a tale that is told,
One, we are one, O heart of my heart,
One, still one, while the world grows old. ~ Alfred Noyes

Hammer", I finished lamely, as he waited patiently for my thoughts to find their voice, "we have got to find better words for the things we have in our hearts."
"Words seem to be weak things," he murmured into my hair, and I could only hope our hearts would prove stronger. ~ Amy Lane

My dad would tell me bedtime stories, and he used to always leave them open-ended and finish at a crucial point with the words, 'dream on'. Then it was my responsibility to finish the story as I was drifting off to sleep. We would call them dreaming stories. ~ Hannah Kent

As soon as we ask whether or not a story is true in the present moment, we empower ourselves to re-frame it. ~ Sharon Salzberg

Where do any of us come from in this cold country? Oh Canada, whether you admitted it or not, we come from you we come from you. From the same soil, the slugs and slime and bogs and twigs and roots. We come from the country that plucks its people out like weeds and flings them into the roadside. We grow in ditches and sloughs, untended and spindly. We erupt in the valleys and mountainsides, in small towns and back alleys, sprouting upside-down on the prairies, our hair wild as spiders' legs, our feet rooted nowhere. We grow where we are not seen, we flourish where we are not heard, the thick undergrowth of an unlikely planting. Where do we come from Obasan? We come from cemetaries full of skeletons with wild roses in their grinning teeth. We come from our untold tales that wait for their telling. We come from Canada, this land that is like every land, filled with the wise, the fearful, the compassionate, the corrupt. ~ Joy Kogawa

Being a literature major, you know, I'm very familiar with the ways symbolism is used in our sort of mythic tales of society, so anyone who is consciously trying to pull that off I think is really interesting and clearly very smart. ~ Carrie Coon

It made a romantic tale. The young rouge, cheating death, returning to his grieving lover. But in reality? Ashyn had always known life did not resemble one of her book stories or Moria's bard tales, and yet there was a part of her that hoped it did. The more she saw, the more she realized she was wrong. People made up stories because that is what they wanted from their world. A place where goodness, kindness, and honor were rewarded. They were not rewarded. The people of Edgewood could attest to that. - Sea Of Shadows ~ Kelly Armstrong

I have an elaborate wind-down ritual, which combines reading, ESPN, movies, and jamming the blues on my keyboard. There's still a part of me that's a little kid who is psyched because I no longer have a bedtime! ~ Tohoru Masamune

There's a flame of magic inside every stone & every flower, every bird that sings & every frog that croaks. There's magic in the trees & the hills & the river & the rocks, in the sea & the stars & the wind, a deep, wild magic that's as old as the world itself. It's in you too, my darling girl, and in me, and in every living creature, be it ever so small. Even the dirt I'm sweeping up now is stardust. In fact, all of us are made from the stuff of stars. ~ Kate Forsyth

Beneath soft looks evil burns,
And slowly round the old wheel turns.
The same mistakes, the same old pride,
The priceless armour cast aside.
The secret enemy is here.
It hides in darkness, fools beware!
For day by day its power grows,
And when at last its face it shows,
Then past and present tales will meet--
The evil circle is complete... ~ Emily Rodda

I adore fairy stories. And I still have the wistful spirit of a child that listens wide-eyed to the marvellous tales told over and over during long winter evenings. ~ Renee Vivien

She was standing in front of all of them in just her bra and jeans. She didn't care. She didn't feel naked- she felt clothed in rage and fury, like a warrior from one of Arthur's tales. ~ Cassandra Clare

The difference between a fairy tale and a sea tale? A fairy tale starts with "Once upon a time". A sea tale starts with " This ain't no $hit"! ~ Edith Widder

I usually doze off between 7:30 and 9 p.m. while putting my baby to sleep. Then I suddenly wake up remembering I'm an adult with no bedtime. I spend the next four hours catching up on reading, e-mails, and other adult pursuits until I collapse for good until sunrise. ~ Padma Lakshmi

Do you like novels?"
He shook his head. "I usually read for information, not entertainment."
"You disapprove of reading for pleasure?"
"No, it's just that I don't often manage to find the time for it."
"Perhaps that's why you don't sleep well. You need an interlude between work and bedtime."
There was a dry, perfectly timed pause before Harry asked, "What would you suggest?"
Aware of his meaning, Poppy felt a bloom of color emerge from head to toe. Harry seemed to enjoy her discomfiture, not in a mocking way, but as if he found her charming. ~ Lisa Kleypas

A tale from which pieces have been raked out is like a fire that has been poked. One does not know the operation has been performed, but everyone feels the effect. ~ Rudyard Kipling

Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that came down to us from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light that endures. And of these histories most fair still in the ears of the Elves is the tale of Beren and Lúthien ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

When you hear the words 'magic' and 'story', they will probably evoke thoughts of your favourite fairy tales from childhood. Storybook pages abound with all manner of magic: fantastical fairies, wish-granting genies, or even a certain boy wizard. ~ Tony DiTerlizzi

One might get the impression that I recommend a new methodology which replaces induction by counterinduction and uses a multiplicity of theories, metaphysical views, fairy tales, instead of the customary pair theory/observation. This impression would certainly be mistaken. My intention is not to replace one set of general rules by another such set: my intention is rather to convince the reader that all methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits. ~ Paul Feyerabend

Life is not at all what you might think it to be
A simple tale where each thing has its history
It's much more than its scuffle and anything goes
Both evil and good, subject to the same laws. ~ John Ashbery

Raising children I've decided is a lot sadder than I expecte4d. Seeing them grow up brightly and vividly is tempered by the knowledge that each year brings another share of lasts. The last time I push my daughter on a swing. The last time I play Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus. The last time I read a bedtime story. If I could give my daughters one piece of advice I would tell them to make the most of the first times -their first kiss, their first date, their first love, the first smile of their first child…There can only be one. ~ Michael Robotham

I have a theory that he's not actually as stupid as he likes to act, because often he'll play the stupidity card in a really smart way . ~ David Clawson

As she appears in the room, her face is still covered by the hood of her coat, but I can see the outline of her chin, and a faint glow that frightens me. She slowly pulls back the hood and her eyes bore into me. Eyes red with flame, it is though they are scanning my soul, deep within me."

From 'She Blames Me' (Banfield Tales) ~ Michael Braccia