The Road to Oz quotes

“My, but you’re clumsy!” said the little girl. “Are your feet tired?”

“No, miss; it’s my whiskers; they tire very easily in this warm weather,” said he. “I wish it would snow, don’t you?”

“ ’Course not, Shaggy Man,” replied Dorothy, giving him a severe look. “If it snowed in August it would spoil the corn and the oats and the wheat; and then Uncle Henry wouldn’t have any crops; and that would make him poor; and—”

“I thought so,” she answered, greatly perplexed. “And I saw the gopher holes, too, and the dead stump; but they’re not here now. These roads are all strange—and what a lot of them there are! Where do you suppose they all go to?”

“Roads,” observed the shaggy man, “don’t go anywhere. They stay in one place, so folks can walk on them.”

He put his hand in his side-pocket and drew out an apple—quick, before Toto could bite him again. The little dog got his head out this time and said “Bow-wow!” so loudly that it made Dorothy jump.

“I’m sure you will,” said the shaggy man, smilingly nodding at her. “

Good little girls never come to any harm, you know. For my part, I’m good, too; so nothing ever hurts me.

”

“Why didn’t the Eskimo keep it?” she asked, looking at the Magnet with interest.

“He got tired of being loved and longed for someone to hate him. So he gave me the Magnet and the very next day a grizzly bear ate him.”

“Wasn’t he sorry then?” she inquired.

“Once,” said Dorothy, “I knew a Hungry Tiger who longed to eat fat babies, because it was his nature to; but he never ate any because he had a Conscience.”

“This bear,” replied the shaggy man, with a sigh, “had no Conscience, you see.”

The shaggy man sat silent for several minutes, apparently considering the cases of the bear and the tiger, while Toto watched him with an air of great interest.

“My name’s Dorothy,” said she, jumping up again, “but what are we going to do? We can’t stay here forever, you know.”

“Let’s take the seventh road,” he suggested. “Seven is a lucky number for little girls named Dorothy.”

“From where you begin to count.”

He paused in his digging and tried to think.

“Papa always said I was bright as a button; so mama always called me Button-Bright,” he said.

“What is your papa’s name?”

“I can’t say I do,” replied Dorothy, remembering her present difficulties.

“No one knows everything, Dorothy,” he said.

“But Button-Bright doesn’t seem to know anything,” she declared. “Do you, Button-Bright?”

“I mean, have you ever been where there’s water?”

“Yes,” said Button-Bright; “there’s a well in our back yard.”

“You don’t understand,” cried Dorothy. “I mean, have you ever been on a big ship floating on a big ocean?”

“I’m like Button-Bright. I don’t know,” answered the shaggy man, with a laugh. “

But I’ve learned from long experience that every road leads somewhere, or there wouldn’t be any road; so it’s likely that if we travel long enough, my dear, we will come to some place or another in the end.

What place it will be we can’t even guess at this moment, but we’re sure to find out when we get there.”

They started on, with Dorothy on one side, and Toto on the other, the little party trudging along more cheerfully than you might have supposed. The girl was getting used to queer adventures, which interested her very much.

Wherever Dorothy went Toto was sure to go, like Mary’s little lamb.

Button-Bright didn’t seem a bit afraid or worried because he was lost, and the shaggy man had no home, perhaps, and was as happy in one place as in another.

“That’s right,” declared the Fox-King, nodding approval. “

Be contented with your lot, whatever it happens to be, if you are wise.

Which reminds me that you have a new companion on this adventure—he looks very clever and bright.”

“So were human beings born without clothes,” he replied; “and until they became civilized they wore only their natural skins.

But to become civilized means to dress as elaborately and prettily as possible, and to make a show of your clothes so your neighbors will envy you, and for that reason both civilized foxes and civilized humans spend most of their time dressing themselves.

”

“I don’t,” declared the shaggy man.

“That is true,” said the King, looking at him carefully; “but perhaps you are not civilized.”

After a sound sleep and a good night’s rest they had their breakfast with the King and then bade his Majesty goodbye.

“That’s right,” answered Dorothy. “Take us to someone who knows something.”

“Oh, we all know something, my child, or we shouldn’t be donkeys,” asserted the grey one, with dignity.

“The word ‘donkey’ means ‘clever,’ you know.”

“All donkeys are born wise,” was the reply, “so the only school we need is the school of experience.

Books are only for those who know nothing, and so are obliged to learn things from other people.

”

“All donkeys are born wise,” was the reply, “so the only school we need is the school of experience. Books are only for those who know nothing, and so are obliged to learn things from other people.”

“In other words, the more stupid one is, the more he thinks he knows,” observed the shaggy man.

The grey donkey paid no attention to this speech because he had just stopped before a house which had painted over the doorway a pair of hoofs, with a donkey tail between them and a rude crown and sceptre above.

“Then you mustn’t harm me, or my friends,” said the shaggy man, firmly.

“We love you in soup!” they yelled, and in a flash turned their white sides to the front.

“How dreadful!” said Dorothy. “This is a time, Shaggy Man, when you get loved too much.”

“We love you in soup!” they yelled, and in a flash turned their white sides to the front.

“How dreadful!” said Dorothy. “This is a time, Shaggy Man, when you get loved too much.”

“Don’t want to be soup!” wailed Button-Bright again; and Toto began to whine dismally, as if he didn’t want to be soup, either.

“True,” replied the Queen. “We love you very much; so much that we intend to eat your broth with real pleasure. But tell me, do you think I am so beautiful?”

“You won’t be at all beautiful if you eat me,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “Handsome is as handsome does, you know.”

The Queen turned to Button-Bright.

It was a mere mass of splinters now, crushed out of shape against the rocks. The wind had torn away the sail and carried it to the top of a tall tree, where the fragments of it fluttered like a white flag.

“Well,” he said, cheerfully, “we’re here; but where the here is I don’t know.”

“It must be some part of the Land of Oz,” observed Dorothy, coming to his side.

“You’re all right, Shaggy Man,” declared Dorothy. “And Button-Bright is all right, too. So let’s thank the Truth Pond for being so nice, and start on our journey to the Emerald City.”

“I hate to leave it,” murmured the shaggy man, with a sigh. “A truth pond wouldn’t be a bad thing to carry around with us.”

But he put on his coat and started with the others in search of someone to direct them on their way.

“Why not?” asked the shaggy man.

“If we used money to buy things with, instead of love and kindness and the desire to please one another, then we should be no better than the rest of the world,” declared the Tin Woodman.

“Fortunately money is not known in the Land of Oz at all. We have no rich, and no poor;

“Fortunately money is not known in the Land of Oz at all.

We have no rich, and no poor; for what one wishes the others all try to give him, in order to make him happy, and no one in all Oz cares to have more than he can use.

”

Yet Tik-Tok was popular with the people of Oz because he was so trustworthy, reliable and true; he was sure to do exactly what he was wound up to do, at all times and in all circumstances.

Perhaps it is better to be a machine that does its duty than a flesh-and-blood person who will not, for a dead truth is better than a live falsehood.

About noon the travelers reached a large field of pumpkins—a vegetable quite appropriate to the yellow country of the Winkies—and some of the pumpkins which grew there were of remarkable size.

“Yes; it rules me like a tyrant,” answered the Tiger, sorrowfully.

“I can imagine nothing more unpleasant than to own a Conscience,” and he winked slyly at his friend the Lion.

“You’re fooling me!” said Dorothy, with a laugh. “I don’t b’lieve you’d eat a baby if you lost your Conscience. Come here, Polly,” she called, “and be introduced to my friends.”

“You have some queer friends, Dorothy,” she said.

“The queerness doesn’t matter so long as they’re friends,” was the answer.

“This is the Cowardly Lion, who isn’t a coward at all, but just thinks he is. The Wizard gave him some courage once, and he has part of it left.”

“Hush, Dorothy,” whispered the Tiger; “you’ll ruin my reputation if you are not more discreet.

It isn’t what we are, but what folks think we are, that counts in this world.

And come to think of it Miss Polly would make a fine variegated breakfast, I’m sure.”

Now that I’m here, I hope to remain, and to become one of your Majesty’s most faithful subjects.”

“But in Oz we are loved for ourselves alone, and for our kindness to one another, and for our good deeds,” she said.

“I’ll give up the Love Magnet,” said the shaggy man, eagerly; “Dorothy shall have it.”

“How did you know my name, Santa?” she replied, feeling more shy in the presence of this immortal saint than she ever had before in her young life.

“Why, don’t I see you every Christmas Eve, when you’re asleep?” he rejoined, pinching her blushing cheek.

“And here’s Button-Bright, I declare!” cried Santa Claus, holding up the boy to kiss him. “What a long way from home you are; dear me!”

Next marched the Emerald City Cornet Band, clothed in green-and-gold uniforms and playing the “Ozma Two-Step.” The Royal Army of Oz followed, consisting of twenty-seven officers, from the Captain-General down to the Lieutenants.

There were no privates in Ozma’s Army because soldiers were not needed to fight battles, but only to look important, and an officer always looks more imposing than a private.

While the people cheered and waved their hats and handkerchiefs, there came walking the Royal Princess Ozma, looking so pretty and sweet that it is no wonder her people love her so dearly.