The Princess and Curdie quotes

Curdie was the son of Peter the miner. He lived with his father and mother in a cottage built on a mountain, and he worked with his father inside the mountain.

A mountain is a strange and awful thing.

In old times, without knowing so much of their strangeness and awfulness as we do, people were yet more afraid of mountains.

Now that we have learned to look at them with admiration, perhaps we do not always feel quite awe enough of them.

To me they are beautiful terrors.

I will try to tell you what they are. They are portions of the heart of the earth that have escaped from the dungeon down below, and rushed up and out.

The boy should enclose and keep, as his life, the old child at the heart of him, and never let it go. He must still, to be a right man, be his mother’s darling, and more, his father’s pride, and more.

The child is not meant to die, but to be forever fresh-born.

Curdie had made himself a bow and some arrows, and was teaching himself to shoot with them. One evening in the early summer, as he was walking home from the mine with them in his hand, a light flashed across his eyes.

“

Remember, then, that whoever does not mean good is always in danger of harm.

But I try to give everybody fair play; and those that are in the wrong are in far more need of it always than those who are in the right: they can afford to do without it.

they can afford to do without it. Therefore I say for you that when you shot that arrow you did not know what a pigeon is. Now that you do know, you are sorry.

It is very dangerous to do things you don’t know about.

”

“There you are much mistaken,” said the old quavering voice. “How little you must have thought! Why, you don’t seem even to know the good of the things you are constantly doing. Now don’t mistake me. I don’t mean you are good for doing them.

It is a good thing to eat your breakfast, but you don’t fancy it’s very good of you to do it. The thing is good⁠—not you.

”

“You have got it, Curdie,” said the old lady, in a voice that sounded almost as if she had been crying. “

When people don’t care to be better they must be doing everything wrong. I am so glad you shot my bird!

”

“Then I will tell you. There is only one way I care for.

Do better, and grow better, and be better. And never kill anything without a good reason for it.

”

“

Then dream often, my son; for there must then be more truth in your dreams than in your waking thoughts.

But however any of these things may be, this one point remains certain: there can be no harm in doing as she told you. And, indeed, until you are sure there is no such person, you are bound to do it, for you promised.”

“True, father!—Yes, mother, I’ll do it,” said Curdie.

Then they went to bed, and sleep, which is the night of the soul, next took them in its arms and made them well.

“The king never made that law,” she answered, with some displeasure. “You may ask me as many as you please—that is, so long as they are sensible. Only I may take a few thousand years to answer some of them. But that’s nothing.

Of all things time is the cheapest.

”

“I could give you twenty names more to call me, Curdie, and not one of them would be a false one.

What does it matter how many names if the person is one?

”

“

Shapes are only dresses, Curdie, and dresses are only names. That which is inside is the same all the time.

”

His back was to the light of the sunset, which closed him all round in a beautiful setting, and Curdie thought what a grand-looking man his father was, even when he was tired.

It is greed and laziness and selfishness, not hunger or weariness or cold, that take the dignity out of a man, and make him look mean.

“Ah, Curdie! there you are!” he said, seeing his son come bounding along as if it were morning with him and not evening.

He rushed to the fire, and thrust both his hands right into the middle of the heap of flaming roses, and his arms halfway up to the elbows. And it did hurt! But he did not draw them back.

He held the pain as if it were a thing that would kill him if he let it go⁠—as indeed it would have done.

He was in terrible fear lest it should conquer him.

“Much good that would do, Curdie! I don’t say there are no cases in which it would be of use, but they are very rare and peculiar cases, and if such come you will know them.

To such a person there is in general no insult like the truth.

He cannot endure it, not because he is growing a beast, but because he is ceasing to be a man.

“Your gift does more for you than it promised.

It is yet better to perceive a hidden good than a hidden evil.

”

No man pretended to love his neighbour, but everyone said he knew that peace and quiet behaviour was the best thing for himself, and that, he said, was quite as useful, and a great deal more reasonable.

The city was prosperous and rich, and if anybody was not comfortable, everybody else said he ought to be.

When Curdie got up opposite the mighty rock, which sparkled all over with crystals, he found a narrow bridge, defended by gates and portcullis and towers with loopholes. But the gates stood wide open, and were dropping from their great hinges;

When Lina saw that, she leaped up in a fury and was rushing at the house, into which she would certainly have broken; but Curdie called her, and made her lie down beside him while he bethought him what next he should do.

“Lina,” he said, “the people keep their gates open, but their houses and their hearts shut.”

As if she knew it was her presence that had brought this trouble upon him, she rose, and went round and round him, purring like a tigress, and rubbing herself against his legs.

But after he had watched for some minutes, it did not seem at all likely the chance would arrive before suppertime, and he was just about to turn away and rejoin Lina, when he saw that there was not a person in the place.

Curdie never made up his mind and then hesitated.

He darted in, seized the pie, and bore it, swiftly and noiselessly, to the cellar stair.

“Lying!” said a great, coarse footman. “I suppose you mean when I told you yesterday you were a pretty girl when you didn’t pout? Lying, indeed!

Tell us something worth repenting of! Lying is the way of Gwyntystorm.

You should have heard Jabez lying to the cook last night! He wanted a sweetbread for his pup, and pretended it was for the princess! Ha! ha! ha!”

By many ups and downs and windings and turnings she brought him to a dimly-lighted room, where lay an elderly man asleep. His arm was outside the coverlid, and Curdie gave his hand a hurried grasp as he went by.

His heart beat for joy, for he had found a good, honest human hand.

“I suppose that is why he is ill,” he said to himself.

“Put your foot on his mouth, Lina,” said Curdie.

“The truth Fear tells is not much better than her lies.”

The rest of the creatures now came stalking, rolling, leaping, gliding, hobbling into the room, and each as he came took the next place along the wall, until, solemn and grotesque, all stood ranged, awaiting orders.

She made neither motion nor sound. Gathering courage, and taking the thing for a spectral illusion, he made a step forward. She showed her other teeth, with a growl neither more than audible nor less than horrible. The secretary sank fainting into a chair.

He was not a brave man, and besides, his conscience had gone over to the enemy, and was sitting against the door by Lina.

To the lord chamberlain’s door next, Curdie conducted the legserpent, and let him in.

At this point of the discourse the head of the legserpent rose from the floor of the temple, towering above the pulpit, above the priest, then curving downwards, with open mouth slowly descended upon him.

Horror froze the sermon-pump.

He stared upwards aghast.

He woke like a giant refreshed with wine.

When he went into the king’s chamber, the housemaid sat where he had left her, and everything in the room was as it had been the night before, save that a heavenly odour of roses filled the air of it.

“Can you do as you are bid?”

“I can keep on trying, sir.”

“Come, then. Were I not a man I would be a woman such as thou.”

much as the thin stone, shot with horizontal cast of arm, having touched and torn the surface of the lake, ascends to skim, touch, and tear again. So mingled the feathered multitude in the grim game of war.

It was a storm in which the wind was birds, and the sea men.

And ever as each bird arrived at the rear of the enemy, it turned, ascended, and sped to the front to charge again.