Misattributed To A A Milne Quotes

How lucky I am to have known somebody and something that saying goodbye to is so damned awful. ~ Evans G. Valens

Voltaire once wrote, "Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers." Sir Francis Bacon added, "A prudent question is one-half of wisdom." Indira Gandhi concluded that "the power to question is the basis of all human progress." Great questions are clearly the quickest path to great answers. ~ Gary Keller

If you haven't the creative urge, or if it is fulfilled elsehow, then, although you may be a skilled craftsman, writing the most delightful letters to your friends, the most lucid reports to your superiors, you will never produce a poem or a play or a story. You may make a journalist but you will never make an author. ~ Christopher Milne

Well, I've got an idea," said Rabbit, "and here it is. We take Tigger for a long explore, somewhere where he's never been, and we lose him there, and next morning we find him again, and
mark my words
he'll be a different Tigger altogether."
"Why?" said Pooh.
"Because he'll be a Humble Tigger. Because he'll be a Sad Tigger, a Melancholy Tigger, a Small and Sorry Tigger, an Oh-Rabbit-I-am-glad-to-see-you Tigger. That's why."
"Will he be glad to see me and Piglet, too?"
"Of course."
"That's good," said Pooh.
"I should hate him to go on being Sad," said Piglet doubtfully.
"Tiggers never go on being Sad," explained Rabbit. ~ A.A. Milne

We opened a design center in the South of England last year as part of our strategy for being close to our customers and developing innovative products for exciting new markets. ~ David Milne

Pooh went into a corner and tried saying 'Aha!' in that sort of voice. Sometimes it seemed to him that it did mean what Rabbit said, and sometimes it seemed to him that it didn't. "I suppose it's just practice," he thought. "I wonder if Kanga will have to practise too so as to understand it. ~ A.A. Milne

I knew when I met you an adventure was going to happen. ~ A.A. Milne

It is impossible to win gracefully at chess. No man has yet said "Mate!" in a voice which failed to sound to his opponent bitter, boastful and malicious. ~ A.A. Milne

In the language of the day it is customary to describe a certain sort of book as "escapist" literature. As I understand it, the adjective implies, a little condescendingly, that the life therein depicted cannot be identified with the real life which the critic knows so well in W.C.1: and may even have the disastrous effect on the reader of taking him happily for a few hours out of his own real life in N.W.8. Why this should be a matter for regret I do not know; nor why realism in a novel is so much admired when realism in a picture is condemned as mere photography; nor, I might add, why drink and fornication should seem to bring the realist closer to real life than, say, golf and gardening. ~ A.A. Milne

I think we dream so we don't have to be apart for so long. If we're in each other's dreams, we can be together all the time. ~ A.A. Milne

The average man finds life very uninteresting as it is. And I think the reason why is that he is always waiting for something to happen to him instead of setting to work to make things happen ~ A.A. Milne

He [Winne the Pooh] sang it like that, which is much the best way of singing it, and when he had finished, he waited for Piglet to say that, of all the outdoor hums for Snowy weather he had ever heard, this was the best. And after thinking the matter out carefully, Piglet said:
"Pooh," he said solemnly, "It isn't the toes so much as the ears".
... Pooh began to feel a little more comfortable, because when you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and other people look at it ~ A.A. Milne

The decision to rely heavily on high-altitude air power, target urban infrastructure and repeatedly attack heavily populated towns and villages has reflected a deliberate trade-off of the lives of American pilots and soldiers, not with those of their declared Taliban enemies, but with Afghan civilians ... There will be no official two-minute silence for the Afghan dead, no newspaper obituaries or memorial services attended by the prime minister, as there were for the victims of the twin towers. ~ Seumas Milne

Well, if you listen, Piglet, you'll hear it."
"How do you know I'm not listening?" Pooh couldn't answer that one, so he began to sing. ~ A.A. Milne

To insist on a spiritual practice that served you in the past is to carry the raft on your back after you have crossed the river. ~ Gautama Buddha

In the West we have a tendency to be profit-oriented, where everything is measured according to the results and we get caught up in being more and more active to generate results. In the East
especially in India
I find that people are more content to just be, to just sit around under a banyan tree for half a day chatting to each other. We Westerners would probably call that wasting time. But there is value to it. Being with someone, listening wihtout a clock and without anticipation of results, teaches us about love. The success of love is in the loving
it is not in the result of loving.
These words, taken from the book A Simple Path, are the words of one of the Missionaries of Charity Sisters, not of Mother Teresa. ~ Mother Teresa

Pooh looked at his two paws. He knew that one of them was the right, and he knew that when you had decided which one of them was the right, then the other one was the left, but he never could remember how to begin. "Well," he said slowly. ~ A.A. Milne

The difficulty in the way of writing a children's play is that Barrie was born too soon. Many people must have felt the same about Shakespeare. We who came later have no chance. What fun to have been Adam, and to have had the whole world of plots and jokes and stories at one's disposal. ~ A.A. Milne

So perhaps the best thing to do is to stop writing Introductions and get on with the book. ~ A.A. Milne

But it isn't easy,' said Pooh. 'Because Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you. ~ A.A. Milne

To the uneducated an A is just three sticks. ~ A.A. Milne

Piglet opened the letter box and climbed in. Then, having untied himself, he began to squeeze into the slit, through which in the old days when front doors were front doors, many an unexpected letter than WOL had written to himself, had come slipping. ~ A.A. Milne

Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world. ~ Bette Midler

Diplomacy frequently consists in soothingly saying 'Nice doggie' until you have a chance to pick up a rock. ~ Walter Trumbull

For some time now Pooh had been saying "Yes" and "No" in turn, with his eyes shut, to all that Owl was saying, and having said, "Yes, yes," last time, he said "No, not at all," now, without really knowing what Owl was talking about. ~ A.A. Milne

I'll give you three guesses, Rabbit. Digging holes in the ground? Wrong. Leaping from branch to branch of a young oak tree? Wrong. Waiting for somebody to help me out of the river? Right. Give Rabbit time, and he'll always get the answer. ~ A.A. Milne

Paradoxically, intensifiers like very, highly, and extremely also work like hedges. They not only fuzz up a writer's prose but can undermine his intent. If I'm wondering who pilfered the petty cash, it's more reassuring to hear Not Jones; he's an honest man than Not Jones; he's a very honest man. The reason is that unmodified adjectives and nouns tend to be interpreted categorically: honest means "completely honest," or at least "completely honest in the way that matters here" (just as Jack drank the bottle of beer implies that he chugged down all of it, not just a sip or two). As soon as you add an intensifier, you're turning an all-or-none dichotomy into a graduated scaled. True, you're trying to place your subject high on the scale - say, an 8.7 out of 10 - but it would have been better if the reader were not considering his relative degree of honesty in the first pace. That's the basis for the common advice (usually misattributed to Mark Twain) to "substitute damn every time you're inclined to write very; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be" - though today the substitution would have to be of a word stronger than damn. ~ Steven Pinker

It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it. ~ Maurice Switzer

To her-
Hand in hand we come
Christopher Robin and I
To lay this book in your lap.
Say you're surprised?
Say you like it?
Say it's just what you wanted?
Because it's yours-
because we love you. ~ A.A. Milne

How sweet to be a Cloud Floating in the Blue! It makes him very proud To be a little cloud. ~ A.A. Milne

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relatio ~ Bob Moorehead

I do remember, and then when I try to remember, I forget. ~ A.A. Milne

It is the best way to write poetry, letting things come. -Winnie-the-Pooh ~ A.A. Milne

He thought how sad it was to be an Animal who had never had a bunch of violets picked for him. ~ A.A. Milne

When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Owl,' said Rabbit shortly, 'you and I have brains. The others have fluff. If there is easy thinking to be done in this Forest - and when I say thinking I mean thinking - you and I must do it. ~ A.A. Milne