Nesbit Quotes

Mother did not spend all her time in paying dull calls to dull ladies, and sitting dully at home waiting for dull ladies to pay calls to her. She was almost always there, ready to play with the children, and read to them, and help them to do their home-lessons. Besides this she used to write stories for them while they were at school, and read them aloud after tea, and she always made up funny pieces of poetry for their birthdays and for other great occasions, such as the christening of the new kittens, or the refurnishing of the doll's house, or the time when they were getting over the mumps. ~ E. Nesbit

Bean felt a rush of sweet nostalgia for the woman who had introduced us to E. Nesbit and Edward Eager and Laura Ingalls Wilder ... ~ Eleanor Brown

But it's raining cats and dogs,' said Jane. ~ E. Nesbit

I don't agree with you in the least," said Temple - "about marriage, I mean. A man ought to want to get married - "
"To anybody? Without its being anybody in particular?"
"Yes," said Temple stoutly. "If he gets to thirty without wanting to marry any one in particular, he ought to look about till he finds some one he does want. It's the right and proper thing to marry and have kiddies. ~ E. Nesbit

There are brown eyes in the world, after all, as well as blue, and one pair of brown that meant heaven to me as the blue had never done ~ E. Nesbit

And it's no use putting her on her honour, because - '
'Because she hasn't any,' Philip finished.
'I wouldn't say that,' said the parrot, 'of anybody. I'd only say we haven't come across it. ~ E. Nesbit

Aunt Emily says grown-ups never really like playing. They do it to please us."

"They little know," Gerald answered, "how often we do it to please them. ~ E. Nesbit

I think magic went out when people began to have steam-engines, and newspapers, and telephones and wireless telegraphing. ~ E. Nesbit

Well, you're to stay here and be my little boy till we find out where father is. We shall let the police know. They're sure to find him." "The pleece!" Dickie cried in horror. "Why, father, 'e ain't done nothing." "No, no, of course not," said the lady in a hurry; "but the police know all sorts of things - about where people are, I know, and what they're doing - even when they haven't done anything." "The pleece knows a jolly sight too much," said Dickie, in gloom. ~ E. Nesbit

My Lamb, you are so very small, You have not learned to read at all; Yet never a printed book withstands The urgence of your dimpled hands. So, though this book is for yourself, Let mother keep it on the shelf Till you can read. O days that pass, That day will come too soon, alas! ~ E. Nesbit

I'll plant and water, sow and weed, Till not an inch of earth shows brown, And take a vow of each small seed To grow to greenness and renown: And then some day you'll pass my way, See gold and crimson, bell and star, And catch my garden's soul, and say: "How sweet these cottage gardens are!" ~ E. Nesbit

For really there is nothing like wings for getting you into trouble. But, on the other hand, if you are in trouble, there is nothing like wings for getting you out of it. ~ E. Nesbit

I'd like to marry a lady who had trances, and only woke up once or twice a year ~ E. Nesbit

There is a curtain, thin as gossamer, clear as glass, strong as iron, that hangs forever between the world of magic and the world that seems to us to be real. ~ E. Nesbit

But what's the use of belonging anywhere if you're invisible? ~ E. Nesbit

(I am tired of calling Roberta by her name. I don't see why I should. No one else did. Everyone else called her Bobbie, and I don't see why I shouldn't.) ~ E. Nesbit

I'll tell you something," said Francis,urgent with shoe lace, "if we keep on saying things weren't when we know perfectly well they were, we shall soon dish up any sort of chance of magic we may ever have had. When do you find people in books going on like that? They just say 'This is magic!' and behave as if it was. They don't go pretending they're not sure. Why, no magic would stand it."
Book: Wet Magic, Chapter 2 ~ E. Nesbit

When the next Saturday came around everyone was a little nervous, but the Red Dragon was pretty quiet that day and only ate an Orphanage. ~ E. Nesbit

Sometimes, in moments of great need, we can do wonderful things. ~ E. Nesbit

We felt in control of ourselves, we felt hopeful that we had made the right choice, we felt weary, we felt all of thee things at the same time, but more so: we felt we could not turn back. ~ TaraShea Nesbit

Don't bother about believing it, if you don't like it,' said the Princess. 'It doesn't so much matter what you believe as what I am. ~ E. Nesbit

It is all very wonderful and mysterious, as all life is apt to be if you go a little below the crust, and are not content just to read newspapers and go by the Tube Railway, and buy your clothes ready-made, and think nothing can be true unless it is uninteresting. ~ E. Nesbit

I can't think what made him so horrid. Perhaps it was because he had been so very nice and kind all the earlier part of the day, and now he had to have a change. This is called reaction. One notices it now and then in oneself. Sometimes when one has been extra good for a longer time than usual, one is suddenly attacked by a violent fit of not being good at all. ~ E. Nesbit

If you're lucky enough to be different, don't you ever changed - Taylor Swift ~ E. Nesbit

This is why I shall not tell you in this story about all the days when nothing happened. You will not catch me saying, 'thus the sad days passed slowly by'
or 'the years rolled on their weary course'
or 'time went on'
because it is silly; of course time goes on
whether you say so or not. So I shall just tell you the nice, interesting parts
and in between you will understand that we had our meals and got up and went to bed, and dull things like that. ~ E. Nesbit

Trying not to believe things when in your heart you are almost sure they are true, is as bad for the temper as anything I know. ~ E. Nesbit

I think everyone in the world is friends if you can only get them to see you don't want to be un-friends. ~ E. Nesbit

They didn't know being dead is only being asleep, and you're bound to wake up somewhere or other, either where you go to sleep or some better place. ~ E. Nesbit

And where are you going?"
"I dunno," said the Spangled Boy. "I'm running from, not to."
Book: Wet Magic, Chapter 5. ~ E. Nesbit

So you see it was all right in the end. But if one does that sort of thing, one has to be careful to do it in the right way. For, as Mr. Perks said, when he had time to think it over, it's not so much what you do, as what you mean. ~ E. Nesbit

Out, out, into the night,
The belfry bells are ours by right! ~ E. Nesbit

If you say that the China Cat might have lost its ear-tips in battle you are the kind of person who always makes difficulties, and you may be quite sure that the kind of splendid magics that happened to Tavy will never happen to you. ~ E. Nesbit

Or, for one of our mothers, the secret to a good marriage, she said, was sex. ~ TaraShea Nesbit

they would soon be old enough to read The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit and Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome, and eventually Iris Murdoch and Alan Bennett. They could all be readers, and maybe even uncommon ones. ~ Will Schwalbe

The ones as big as sheep were easier to avoid, because you could see them coming, but when they flew in at the window and curled up under your eiderdown, and you did not find them till you went to bed, it was always a shock. The ones this size did not eat people, only lettuces, but they always scorched the sheets and pillowcases dreadfully. ~ E. Nesbit

Girls are just as clever as boys, and don't you forget it! ~ E. Nesbit

With gloomy face he picked it up And took it to his Mother, Though even he could not suppose That she could make another; For those who perished on the line He did not seem to care, His engine being more to him Than all the people there. And now you see the reason why Our Peter has been ill: He soothes his soul with pigeon-pie His gnawing grief to kill. He wraps himself in blankets warm And sleeps in bed till late, Determined thus to overcome His miserable fate. And if his eyes are rather red, His cold must just excuse it: Offer him pie; you may be sure He never will refuse it. ~ E. Nesbit

And that, my dear children, is the moral of this chapter. I did not mean it to have a moral, but morals are nasty forward beings, and will keep putting in their oars where they are not wanted. And since the moral has crept in, quite against my wishes, you might as well think of it ... ~ E. Nesbit

The Baby said, 'Wanty go walky'; and the fly stopped with a last rattle and jolt. ~ E. Nesbit

The chestnut's proud, and the lilac's pretty, The poplar's gentle and tall, But the plane tree's kind to the poor dull city - I love him best of all. ~ E. Nesbit

Sometimes the thought of his mother working so hard while he did nothing would come suddenly upon his and he would rush off and try to help her, but whatever he did turned out wrong ... So that it always ended in his mother saying, 'Oh, run along for goodness' sakes, and let me get on with my work.' And then Jack would go and lie on his front ... and make up pretty poems about the Dignity of Labor, or about how dear and good mothers are. ~ E. Nesbit

Don't you think it's rather nice to think that we're in a book that God's writing? If I were writing a book, I might make mistakes. But God knows how to make the story end just right
in the way that's best for us."
Do you really believe that, Mother?" Peter asked quietly.
Yes," she said, "I do believe it
almost always
except when I'm so sad that I can't believe anything. But even when I don't believe it, I know it's true
and I try to believe it. ~ E. Nesbit

Everything has an end, and you get to it if you only keep all on. ~ E. Nesbit

It's an odd thing- the softer and more easily hurt a woman is the better she can screw herself up to do what has to be done. ~ E. Nesbit

Perhaps there's given up being magic because people didn't believe in it any more. ~ E. Nesbit

But they were hers now. The Damned were solidly hers. If she said, "Jump," they paused only to ask, "How high?" then did their best to hit that exact mark, no more and no less. Even Hollick's replacement, Private Nesbit, was hers. He had asked plenty of questions among her crew, watched her actions and plans unfolding in combat after combat, and had developed a solid level of faith in his CO.

After more than two years of open war, two and a half if one counted their preliminary strikes, and after enduring three to four times as many fights as any other crew, they had lost only one soldier from their Company. There was no doubt that Ia's Damned were the finest fighting force available to the war. Two things made them that way: Ia's trust in them to be the right people for the right job at the right point in time, and their trust in her to let them know what the right job was. ~ Jean Johnson

Ladylike is the beastliest word there is, I think. If a girl isn't a lady, it isn't worth while to be only like one, she'd better let it alone and be a free and happy bounder. ~ E. Nesbit

Germ of endearment ~ E. Nesbit

Grown-up people find it difficult to believe really wonderful things, unless they have what they call proof. But children will believe almost anything, and grown-ups know this. That is why they tell you that the earth is round like an orange, when you can see perfectly well that it is flat and lumpy; and why they say that the earth goes round the sun, when you can see for yourself any day that the sun gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night like a good sun as it is, and the earth knows its place, and lies as still as a mouse. Yet I daresay you believe all that about the earth and the sun, and if so you will find it quite easy to believe that before Anthea and Cyril and the others had been a week in the country they had found a fairy. ~ E. Nesbit

Time is, as you are probably aware, merely a convenient fiction. There is no such thing as time. ~ E. Nesbit

Robert explained how much simpler it was to pay money for things than to exchange them as the people were doing in the market. Later on the soldier gave the coins to his captain, who, later still, showed them to Pharaoh, who of course kept them and was much struck with the idea. That was really how coins first came to be used in Egypt. You will not believe this, I daresay, but really, if you believe the rest of the story, I don't see why you shouldn't believe this as well. ~ E. Nesbit

Our darling Roberta,
No sorrow shall hurt her
If we can prevent it
Her whole life long.
Her birthday's our fete day,
We'll make it our great day,
And give her our presents
And sing her our song.
May pleasures attend her
And may the Fates send her
The happiest journey
Along her life's way.
With skies bright above her
And dear ones to love her!
Dear Bob! Many happy
Returns of the day! ~ E. Nesbit

I never read prefaces, and it is not much good writing things just for people to skip. I wonder other authors have never thought of this. ~ E. Nesbit

Being editors is not the best way to wealth. We all feel this now, and highwaymen are not respected any more like they used to be. ~ E. Nesbit

If you don't go with the tide of a dream - if you resist it - you wake up, you know. ~ E. Nesbit

Everything was pleasant that day somehow. There are days like that, you know, when everything goes well from the very beginning; all the things you want are in their places, nobody misunderstands you, and all that you do turns out admirably. ~ E. Nesbit

Time is but a mode of thought ~ E. Nesbit

It wouldn't do to go mixing up the present and the past, and cutting bits out of one to fit into the other. ~ E. Nesbit

There are some days when you seem to have got to the end of all the things that could ever possibly happen to you, and you feel you will spend all the rest of your life doing dull things just the same way. ~ E. Nesbit

Besides, it is wrong to be angry with people for not being so clever as you are yourself. It is not always their faults. ~ E. Nesbit

I see. Certainly. It would be nice to put his name on the buns with pink sugar, wouldn't it?" "Perks," said Peter, "it's not a pretty name." "His other name's Albert," said Phyllis; "I asked him once." "We might put A. P.," said Mother; "I'll show you how when the day comes." This ~ E. Nesbit

You will think that they ought to have been very happy. And so they were, but they did not know HOW happy till the pretty life in the Red Villa was over and done with, and they had to live a very different life indeed. The ~ E. Nesbit

That body did not bleed while I carried it, Nesbit. You touch it but a moment, and it bleeds."
"No, I didn't kill her."
... "The dead always know who to blame. They are very good that way. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

There was a pleasant party of barge people round the fire. You might not have thought it pleasant, but they did; for they were all friends or acquaintances, and they liked the same sort of things, and talked the same sort of talk. This is the real secret of pleasant society. ~ E. Nesbit

It is wonderful how quickly you get used to things, even the most astonishing. ~ E. Nesbit

We don't sleep to sleep, dammit, any more than we eat to eat . We sleep to dream. We're amphibians. We live in two elements and we need both.
Edward Nesbit ~ Lindsay Clarke

Robert rushed to the gravel-pit, found the Psammead, and presently wished for - But that, too, is another story. ~ E. Nesbit

He goes in and the door is shut. I think we will not open the door or follow him. I think that just now we are not wanted there. I think it will be best for us to go quickly and quietly away. At the end of the field, among the thin gold spikes of grass and the harebells and Gipsy roses and St. John's Wort, we may just take one last look, over our shoulders, at the white house where neither we nor anyone else is wanted now. ~ E. Nesbit

Albert-next-door doesn't care for reading, and he has not read nearly so many books as we have, so he is very foolish and ignorant, but it cannot be helped ... Besides, it is wrong to be angry with people for not being so clever as you are yourself. ~ E. Nesbit

Presently she said, "Dears, when you say your prayers, I think you might ask God to show His pity upon all prisoners and captives." "To show His pity," Bobbie repeated slowly, "upon all prisoners and captives. Is that right, Mother?" "Yes," said Mother, "upon all prisoners and captives. All prisoners and captives." Chapter ~ E. Nesbit

Nobody can live in the past or the future without being something of a nut. ~ Evelyn Nesbit

There is no bond like the bond of having read and liked the same books.' ― #EdithNesbit, born #OnThisDay 1858 ~ E. Nesbit

Then suddenly Jack was a changed boy. Something wonderful had happened to him, and it had made him different. It sometimes happened to people that they see or hear something quite wonderful and then they are never altogether the same again. ~ E. Nesbit

I'm kind of a reluctant Anglophile. My mother's a children's librarian, and all of the children's literature I read was from her childhood - E. Nesbit and Dickens, which isn't children's literature at all, but I was sort of steeped in English literature. I thought I was of that world. ~ Jefferson Mays

Oh, Len, isn't she a darling? Just because she saw how our Bandboxful of furniture would rattle about in that big house like a peanut in a cocoanut shell, to lend us all hers! She is a darling. ~ E. Nesbit

Feathers, and a shield and a lance and a sword. His armor and his weapons were all, I am almost sure, of quite different periods. The shield was thirteenth century, while the sword was of the pattern used in the Peninsular War. The cuirass was of the time of Charles I., and the helmet dated from the Second Crusade. The arms on the shield were very grand - three red running lions on a blue ground. The tents were of the latest brand approved of by our modern War Office, and the whole appearance of camp, army, and leader might have been a shock to some. But Robert was dumb with admiration, and it all seemed to him perfectly correct, because he knew no more of heraldry or archaeology than the gifted artists who usually drew the pictures for the historical romances. The scene was indeed "exactly like a picture." He admired ~ E. Nesbit