Quotes from Andrew Lang

Either a wise man will not go into bunkers, or, being in, he will endure such things as befall him with patience.

He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts — for support rather than for illumination.

He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts -- for support rather than for illumination.

He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination.

Young men, especially in America, write to me and ask me to recommend "a course of reading." Distrust a course of reading! People who really care for books read all of them. There is no other course.

You can cover a great deal of country in books.

O grant me a house by the beach of a bay, Where the waves can be surly in winter, and play With the sea-weed in summer, ye bountiful powers! And I'd leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray, For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.

remember that the danger that is most to be feared is never the danger we are most afraid of.

Most people use statistics like a drunk man uses a lamppost; more for support than illumination

Why should I laugh?' asked the old man. 'Madness in youth is true wisdom. Go, young man, follow your dream, and if you do not find the happiness that you seek, at any rate you will have had the happiness of seeking it.

Madame d'Aulnoy is the true mother of the modern fairy tale. She invented the modern Court of Fairyland, with its manners, its fairies, its queens, its amorous, its cruel, its good, its evil, its odious, its friendly fées.

I fear nothing when I am doing right,' said Jack. 'Then,' said the lady in the red cap, 'you are one of those who slay giants.

One gift the fairies gave me ... the love of books, the magic key that opens the enchanted door.

Here stand my books, line upon line They reach the roof, and row by row, They speak of faded tastes of mine, And things I did, but do not, know.

Again, if there are really no fairies, why do people believe in them, all over the world? The ancient Greeks believed, so did the old Egyptians, and the Hindoos, and the Red Indians, and is it likely, if there are no fairies, that so many different peoples would have seen and heard them?

So labour at your Alphabet, For by that learning shall you get To lands where Fairies may be met.

In literature, as in love, one can only speak for himself.

If there are frightful monsters in fairy tales, they do not frighten you now, because that kind of monster is no longer going about the world, whatever he may have done long, long ago. He has been turned into stone, and you may see his remains in museums.

It is so delightful to teach those one loves!

she has been bewitched by a wicked sorceress, and will not regain her beauty until she is my wife.' 'Does she say so? Well if you believe that you may drink cold water and think it bacon'.

Letters from the first were planned to guide us into Fairy Land.

For, as I told you, Good deeds bear their own fruit!

But the three hundred and sixty-five authors who try to write new fairy tales are very tiresome. They always begin with a little boy or girl who goes out and meets the fairies of polyanthuses and gardenias and apple blossoms: 'Flowers and fruits, and other winged things.' These fairies try to be funny, and fail; or they try to preach, and succeed.

The advantage of possessing a great empire is not to be able to do the evil that one desires, but to do all the good that one possibly can.