The Princess and the Goblin quotes

Also the rain made a great trampling noise on the roof. She turned and started at full speed, her little footsteps echoing through the sounds of the rain—back for the stairs and her safe nursery. So she thought, but she had lost herself long ago.

It doesn’t follow that she was lost, because she had lost herself, though.

She ran for some distance, turned several times, and then began to be afraid. Very soon she was sure that she had lost the way back. Rooms everywhere, and no stair!

“Oh, not so very kind!” said the old lady. “

A name is one of those things one can give away and keep all the same.

I have a good many such things. Wouldn’t you like to know who I am, child?”

About this spinning of hers I will tell you more another time.

Guess what she was spinning.

The princess wiped her eyes, and her face grew so hot that they were soon quite dry. She sat down to her dinner, but ate next to nothing.

Not to be believed does not at all agree with princesses: for a real princess cannot tell a lie.

So all the afternoon she did not speak a word. Only when the nurse spoke to her, she answered her, for a real princess is never rude—even when she does well to be offended.

“

If you’re not afraid of them, they’re afraid of you.

I’m not afraid of them. That’s all. But it’s all that’s wanted—up here, that is. It’s a different thing down there. They won’t always mind that song even, down there. And if anyone sings it, they stand grinning at him awfully;

“Yes. But, remember, it may seem to you a very roundabout way indeed, and you must not doubt the thread.

Of one thing you may be sure, that while you hold it, I hold it too.

”

“Sit down again, Irene.

Nothing pleases me better than to see anyone sit in my chair. I am only too glad to stand so long as anyone will sit in it.

”

It is so silly! Old age has nothing whatever to do with all that.

The right old age means strength and beauty and mirth and courage and clear eyes and strong painless limbs.

I am older than you are able to think, and—”

“Not for long, at least, my child.

Perhaps by the time I am two thousand years of age, I shall, indeed, never be afraid of anything.

But I confess I have sometimes been afraid about my children—sometimes about you, Irene.”

“

Because she’s gone where all those rings are made.

”

“

Then if you don’t know what I mean, what right have you to call it nonsense?

” asked the princess, a little offended.

“

People must believe what they can, and those who believe more must not be hard upon those who believe less.

I doubt if you would have believed it all yourself if you hadn’t seen some of it.”

“It means, my love, that I did not mean to show myself. Curdie is not yet able to believe some things.

Seeing is not believing⁠—it is only seeing.

You remember I told you that if Lootie were to see me, she would rub her eyes, forget the half she saw, and call the other half nonsense.”

“You are right. Curdie is much farther on than Lootie, and you will see what will come of it. But in the meantime you must be content, I say, to be misunderstood for a while.

We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be.

But there is one thing much more necessary.”

“Yes; but they think so much of themselves!” said his mother. “

Small creatures always do. The bantam is the proudest cock in my little yard.

”

This perhaps made him the more diligent in his endeavours to serve her. His mother and he often talked on the subject, and she comforted him, and told him she was sure he would some day have the opportunity he so much desired.

Here I should like to remark, for the sake of princes and princesses in general, that it is a low and contemptible thing to refuse to confess a fault, or even an error.

If a true princess has done wrong, she is always uneasy until she has had an opportunity of throwing the wrongness away from her by saying: “I did it; and I wish I had not; and I am sorry for having done it.”

Here I should like to remark, for the sake of princes and princesses in general, that it is a low and contemptible thing to refuse to confess a fault, or even an error.

If a true princess has done wrong, she is always uneasy until she has had an opportunity of throwing the wrongness away from her by saying: “I did it; and I wish I had not; and I am sorry for having done it.”

So you see there is some ground for supposing that Curdie was not a miner only, but a prince as well. Many such instances have been known in the world’s history.

… would have torn them all to pieces, but the king had given orders to carry them away alive, and over each of them, in twelve groups, was standing a knot of goblins, while as many as could find room were sitting upon their prostrate bodies.

Curdie burst in dancing and gyrating and stamping and singing like a small incarnate whirlwind.

“Where ’tis all a hole, sir, Never can be holes: Why should their shoes have soles, sir, When they’ve got no souls?

The clay floor was one mass of mud, and the whole place looked wretched.

But the faces of the mother and the princess shone as if their troubles only made them the merrier.

Curdie burst out laughing at the sight of them.

“I never had such fun!” said the princess, her eyes twinkling and her pretty teeth shining. “How nice it must be to live in a cottage on the mountain!”

“It all depends on what kind your inside house is,” said the mother.

“I know what you mean,” said Irene. “That’s the kind of thing my grandmother says.”

The next morning the sun rose so bright that Irene said the rain had washed his face and let the light out clean.

The torrents were still roaring down the side of the mountain, but they were so much smaller as not to be dangerous in the daylight.