The Water-Babies quotes

He had never been taught to say his prayers. He never had heard of God, or of Christ, except in words which you never have heard, and which it would have been well if he had never heard.

He cried half his time, and laughed the other half.

He cried when he had to climb the dark flues, rubbing his poor knees and elbows raw; and when the soot got into his eyes, which it did every day in the week;

All else was silent.

For old Mrs. Earth was still fast asleep; and, like many pretty people, she looked still prettier asleep than awake.

The great elm-trees in the gold-green meadows were fast asleep above, and the cows fast asleep beneath them;

“Stop!” said the Irishwoman. “I have one more word for you both; for you will both see me again before all is over.

Those that wish to be clean, clean they will be; and those that wish to be foul, foul they will be.

Remember.”

So the keeper went with them; and, to Tom’s surprise, he and Grimes chatted together all the way quite pleasantly.

He did not know that a keeper is only a poacher turned outside in, and a poacher a keeper turned inside out.

They walked up a great lime avenue, a full mile long, and between their stems Tom peeped trembling at the horns of the sleeping deer, which stood up among the ferns.

These last were very difficult questions to answer.

For Harthover had been built at ninety different times, and in nineteen different styles, and looked as if somebody had built a whole street of houses of every imaginable shape, and then stirred them together with a spoon.

For the attics were Anglo-Saxon.

Now running your head against a wall is not pleasant, especially if it is a loose wall, with the stones all set on edge, and a sharp cornered one hits you between the eyes and makes you see all manner of beautiful stars.

The stars are very beautiful, certainly; but unfortunately they go in the twenty-thousandth part of a split second, and the pain which comes after them does not.

And so Tom hurt his head; but he was a brave boy, and did not mind that a penny. He guessed that over the wall the cover would end; and up it he went, and over like a squirrel.

… who, when Tom had all but trodden on him, jumped up with a noise like the express train, leaving his wife and children to shift for themselves, like an old coward, and went off, screaming “Cur‑ru‑u‑uck, cur‑ru‑u‑uck—murder, thieves, fire—cur‑u‑uck‑cock‑kick—the end of the world is come—kick-kick-cock-kick.”

He was always fancying that the end of the world was come, when anything happened which was farther off than the end of his own nose.

But the end of the world was not come, any more than the twelfth of August was; though the old grouse-cock was quite certain of it.

And in a minute more, when he looked round, he stopped again, and said, “

Why, what a big place the world is!

”

and before Tom got through them, he was out in the bright sunshine again; and then he felt, once for all and suddenly, as people generally do, that he was b-e-a-t, beat.

You must expect to be beat a few times in your life, little man, if you live such a life as a man ought to live, let you be as strong and healthy as you may: and when you are, you will find it a very ugly feeling.

I hope that that day you may have a stout staunch friend by you who is not beat; for, if you have not, you had best lie where you are, and wait for better times, as poor Tom did.

But it is a wide world, my little man—and thank Heaven for it, for else, between crinolines and theories, some of us would get squashed—and plenty of room in it for fairies, without people seeing them; unless, of course, they look in the right place.

The most wonderful and the strongest things in the world, you know, are just the things which no one can see.

There is life in you; and it is the life in you which makes you grow, and move, and think: and yet you can’t see it. And there is steam in a steam-engine; and that is what makes it move:

At all events, we will make believe that there are fairies in the world. It will not be the last time by many a one that we shall have to make believe. And yet, after all, there is no need for that.

There must be fairies; for this is a fairy tale: and how can one have a fairy tale if there are no fairies?

You don’t see the logic of that? Perhaps not. Then please not to see the logic of a great many arguments exactly like it, which you will hear before your beard is grey.

… that folks’ fancy that such and such things cannot be, simply because they have not seen them, is worth no more than a savage’s fancy that there cannot be such a thing as a locomotive, because he never saw one running wild in the forest.

Wise men know that their business is to examine what is, and not to settle what is not.

They know that there are elephants; they know that there have been flying dragons; and the wiser they are, the less inclined they will be to say positively that there are no water-babies.

Am I in earnest? Oh dear no!

Don’t you know that this is a fairy tale, and all fun and pretence; and that you are not to believe one word of it, even if it is true?

But at all events, so it happened to Tom.

Now if you don’t like my story, then go to the schoolroom and learn your multiplication-table, and see if you like that better. Some people, no doubt, would do so. So much the better for us, if not for them.

It takes all sorts, they say, to make a world.

However that may be, Tom was amphibious: and what is better still, he was clean.

For the first time in his life, he felt how comfortable it was to have nothing on him but himself.

But he only enjoyed it: he did not know it, or think about it; just as you enjoy life and health, and yet never think about being alive and healthy; and may it be long before you have to think about it!

… at the end of the Long Pond last May, and they all toddled about with long straws sticking out behind, getting between each other’s legs, and tumbling over each other, and looking so ridiculous, that Tom laughed at them till he cried, as we did.

But they were quite right, you know; for people must always follow the fashion, even if it be spoon-bonnets.

Then sometimes he came to a deep still reach; and there he saw the water-forests. They would have looked to you only little weeds:

but they had been forbidden to do that.

Tom had to learn his lesson for himself by sound and sharp experience, as many another foolish person has to do, though there may be many a kind heart yearning over them all the while, and longing to teach them what they can only teach themselves.

At last one day he found a caddis, and wanted it to peep out of its house: but its house-door was shut. He had never seen a caddis with a house-door before:

I’ve done quite enough business, I consider, in the last week, to last me my life. So I shall put on a ball-dress, and go out and be a smart man, and see the gay world, and have a dance or two.

Why shouldn’t one be jolly if one can?

”

If I saw such a thing happen, I should consider it my duty to put them both to death upon the spot.” So the old salmon said, like an old blue-blooded hidalgo of Spain; and what is more, he would have done it too.

For you must know, no enemies are so bitter against each other as those who are of the same race; and a salmon looks on a trout, as some great folks look on some little folks, as something just too much like himself to be tolerated.

Poor little fellow, it was a dreary journey for him; and more than once he longed to be back in Vendale, playing with the trout in the bright summer sun. But it could not be.

What has been once can never come over again.

And people can be little babies, even water-babies, only once in their lives.

And the sea-snails answered, “

Whence we come we know not; and whither we are going, who can tell?

We float out our life in the mid-ocean, with the warm sunshine above our heads, and the warm gulf-stream below; and that is enough for us. Yes; perhaps we have seen the water-babies. We have seen many strange things as we sailed along.”

Now, Sir John knew nothing about sea-cockyolybirds, and cared less, provided the fishmonger sent him good fish for dinner; and My Lady knew as little: but she thought it proper that the children should know something.

For in the stupid old times, you must understand, children were taught to know one thing, and to know it well; but in these enlightened new times they are taught to know a little about everything, and to know it all ill; which is a great deal pleasanter and easier, and therefore quite right.

So Ellie and he were walking on the rocks, and he was showing her about one in ten thousand of all the beautiful and curious things which are to be seen there. But little Ellie was not satisfied with them at all.

… and sat together on the sofa afterwards for an hour, and talked over the state of female labour on the antarctic continent (for nobody talks shop after his claret), and each vowed that the other was the best company he ever met in his life.

What an advantage it is to be men of the world!

From all which you may guess that the professor was not the least of little Ellie’s opinion. So he gave her a succinct compendium of his famous paper at the British Association, in a form suited for the youthful mind.

“Dear me, I never thought of that,” said the lobster; “and after all the experience of life that I have had!”

You see, experience is of very little good unless a man, or a lobster, has wit enough to make use of it.

For a good many people, like old Polonius, have seen all the world, and yet remain little better than children after all.

And, if you will read this story nine times over, and then think for yourself, you will find out why.

It is not good for little boys to be told everything, and never to be forced to use their own wits.

They would learn, then, no more than they do at Dr. Dulcimer’s famous suburban establishment for the idler members of the youthful aristocracy, where the masters learn the lessons and the boys hear them—which saves a great deal of trouble—for the time being.

“

I never was made, my child; and I shall go forever and ever; for I am as old as Eternity, and yet as young as Time.

”

Now you may fancy that Tom was quite good, when he had everything that he could want or wish: but you would be very much mistaken.

Being quite comfortable is a very good thing; but it does not make people good.

Indeed, it sometimes makes them naughty, as it has made the people in America; and as it made the people in the Bible, who waxed fat and kicked, like horses overfed and underworked.

Well, I know.—It may seem a very strange thing, but she never does keep her cupboard locked; everyone may go and taste for themselves, and fare accordingly. It is very odd, but so it is; and I am quite sure that she knows best.

Perhaps she wishes people to keep their fingers out of the fire, by having them burned.

She took off her spectacles, because she did not like to see too much;

“

Ah, you poor little dear! you are just like all the rest.

”

“I will forgive you, little man,” she said. “

I always forgive everyone the moment they tell me the truth of their own accord.

”

“That is a very different matter.

You put them there yourself, and only you can take them away.

”

So when Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby came, Tom asked her; for he thought in his little head, She is not so strict as her sister, and perhaps she may let me off more easily.

Ah, Tom, Tom, silly fellow! and yet I don’t know why I should blame you, while so many grown people have got the very same notion in their heads.

But, when they try it, they get just the same answer as Tom did. For, when he asked the second fairy, she told him just what the first did, and in the very same words.

“

I did warn them all that I could. I let the smoke come out of the mountain; and wherever there is smoke there is fire.

And I laid the ashes and cinders all about; and wherever there are cinders, cinders may be again. But they did not like to face facts, my dears, as very few people do;

“I did warn them all that I could. I let the smoke come out of the mountain; and wherever there is smoke there is fire. And I laid the ashes and cinders all about; and wherever there are cinders, cinders may be again.

But they did not like to face facts, my dears, as very few people do;

and so they invented a cock-and-bull story, which, I am sure, I never told them, that the smoke was the breath of a giant, whom some gods or other had buried under the mountain;

“

Little boys must take the trouble to find out things for themselves, or they will never grow to be men

; so that you must ask all the beasts in the sea and the birds in the air, and if you have been good to them, some of them will tell you the way to Shiny Wall.”

… hunting is all spoilt, and one really cannot get one’s living, or hardly venture off the rock for fear of being flown against by some creature that would not have dared to come within a mile of one a thousand years ago—what was I saying?

Why, we have quite gone down in the world, my dear, and have nothing left but our honour.

And I am the last of my family. A friend of mine and I came and settled on this rock when we were young, to be out of the way of low people.

“So people fancy. But I am not going to trouble myself to make things, my little dear.

I sit here and make them make themselves.

”

“

You must do without me, as most people have to do, for nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of their lives

; and look at the dog instead; for he knows the way well enough, and will not forget it.

“But Epimetheus was a very slow fellow, certainly, and went among men for a clod, and a muff, and a milksop, and a slowcoach, and a bloke, and a boodle, and so forth.

And very little he did, for many years: but what he did, he never had to do over again.

“And what happened at last? There came to the two brothers the most beautiful creature that ever was seen, Pandora by name; which means, All the gifts of the Gods.

“No.

Do the duty which lies nearest you, and catch the first beetle you come across, is my motto

; and I have thriven by it for some hundred years. Now I must go on. Dear me, while I have been talking to you, at least nine new species have escaped me.”

… beating a wretched little radish, no bigger than my thumb, for sullenness and obstinacy and wilful stupidity, and never knew that the reason why it couldn’t learn or hardly even speak was, that there was a great worm inside it eating out all its brains.

But even they are no foolisher than some hundred score of papas and mammas, who fetch the rod when they ought to fetch a new toy, and send to the dark cupboard instead of to the doctor.

Tom was so puzzled and frightened with all he saw, that he was longing to ask the meaning of it; and at last he stumbled over a respectable old stick lying half covered with earth.

Grimes inside it, till he saw running toward him, and shouting “Stop!” three or four people, who, when they came nearer, were nothing else than policemen’s truncheons, running along without legs or arms.

Tom was not astonished. He was long past that.

Besides, he had seen the naviculae in the water move nobody knows how, a hundred times, without arms, or legs, or anything to stand in their stead. Neither was he frightened; for he had been doing no harm.

“No,” answered a solemn voice behind. “

No more did Tom, when you behaved to him in the very same way.

”