A.A. Milne

“You're braver than you think, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

“so they went off together but where ever they go and whatever happens to themon the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the forest a little boy and his bear will always be playing.”

“From what I've read of detective stories, inspectors always do want to drag the pond first.”

“Are you prepared to have quiteobvious things explained to you, to ask futile questions, to give mechances of scoring off you, to make brilliant discoveries of your owntwo or three days after I have made them myself all that kind of thing?”

“You can't help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn't spell it right.”

“If you stop painting policemen in order to paint windmills, criticism remains so overpoweringly policeman-conscious that even a windmill is seen as something with arms out, obviously directing the traffic.”

“Forever isn't long at all, Christopher, as long as I'm with you.”

“When I was One,I had just begun.When I was Two,I was nearly new.When I was ThreeI was hardly me.When I was Four,I was not much more.When I was Five, I was just alive.But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever,So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.”

“And I’d say to myself as I looked so lazily down at the sea:“There’s nobody else in the world, and the world was made for me.”

“Well,” said Owl, “the customary procedure in such cases is as follows.” “What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?” said Pooh. “For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me.”

“Do you remember," he said, "one of Holmes's little scores over Watson about the number of steps up to the Baker Street lodging? Poor old Watson had been up and down them a thousand times, but he had never thought of counting them, whereas Holmes had counted them as a matter of course, and knew that there were seventeen. And that was supposed to be the difference between observation and non-observation. Watson was crushed again, and Holmes appeared to him more amazing than ever. Now, it always seemed to me that in that matter Holmes was the ass, and Watson the sensible person. What on earth is the point of keeping in your head an unnecessary fact like that? If you really want to know at any time the number of steps to your lodging, you can ring up your landlady and ask her.”

“Are you prepared to be the complete Watson?" he asked."Watson?""Do-you-follow-me-Watson; that one. Are you prepared to have quite obvious things explained to you, to ask futile questions, to give me chances of scoring off you, to make brilliant discoveries of your own two or three days after I have made them myself all that kind of thing? Because it all helps.""My dear Tony," said Bill delightedly, "need you ask?" Antony said nothing, and Bill went on happily to himself, "I perceive from the strawberry-mark on your shirt-front that you had strawberries for dessert. Holmes, you astonish me. Tut, tut, you know my methods. Where is the tobacco? The tobacco is in the Persian slipper. Can I leave my practice for a week? I can.”

“Of course it's very hampering being a detective, when you don't know anything about detecting, and when nobody knows that you're doing detection, and you can't have people up to cross-examine them, and you have neither the energy nor the means to make proper inquiries; and, in short, when you're doing the whole thing in a thoroughly amateur, haphazard way.”

“Promise you won't forget me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred.”

“They're funny things, Accidents. You never have them till you're having them.”

“Which makes it a bothering sort of day.”

“So wherever I am, there's always Pooh,There's always Pooh and Me."What would I do?" I said to Pooh,"If it wasn't for you," and Pooh said to me: "True,It isn't much fun for One, but TwoCan stick together," says Pooh, says he."That's how it is," says Pooh.”

“So - here I am in the dark alone,There's nobody here to see;I think to myself, I play to myself,And nobody knows what I say to myself;Here I am in the dark alone,What is it going to be?I can think whatever I like to think,I can play whatever I like to play,I can laugh whatever I like to laugh,There's nobody here but me.”

“Walking with her man,Lost in a dream”

“And Teddy worried lots aboutThe fact that he was rather stout.He thought: "If only I were thin!But how does anyone begin?”

“. . . what I like doing best is Nothing.""How do you do Nothing?" asked Pooh, after he had wondered for a long time."Well, it's when people call out at you just as you're going off to do it, What are you going to do, Christopher Robin, and you say, Oh, nothing, and then you go and do it.”

“TOMY COLLABORATORwho buys the ink and paperlaughsand, in fact, does all the really difficultpart of the businessthis book is gratefully dedicatedin memory of a winter’s morningin Switzerland”

“Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?''Supposing it didn't,' said Pooh. After careful thought Piglet was comforted by this.”

“Owl,' said Rabbit shortly, 'you and I have brains. The others have fluff. If there is easy thinking to be done in this Forest - and when I say thinking I mean thinking - you and I must do it.”

“In the language of the day it is customary to describe a certain sort of book as “escapist” literature. As I understand it, the adjective implies, a little condescendingly, that the life therein depicted cannot be identified with the real life which the critic knows so well in W.C.1: and may even have the disastrous effect on the reader of taking him happily for a few hours out of his own real life in N.W.8. Why this should be a matter for regret I do not know; nor why realism in a novel is so much admired when realism in a picture is condemned as mere photography; nor, I might add, why drink and fornication should seem to bring the realist closer to real life than, say, golf and gardening.”

“You gave me Christopher Robin, and then You breathed new life in Pooh. Whatever of each has left my pen Goes homing back to you. My book is ready, and comes to greet The mother it longs to see -- It would be my present to you, my sweet, If it weren't your gift to me.”

“And really, it wasn’t much good having anything exciting like floods, if you couldn’t share them with somebody.”

“Wherever I am, there's always Pooh,There's always Pooh and Me.Whatever I do, he wants to do,"Where are you going today?" says Pooh:"Well, that's very odd 'cos I was too.Let's go together," says Pooh, says he."Let's go together," says Pooh.”

“Later on, when they had all said “Good-bye” and “Thank-you” to Christopher Robin, Pooh and Piglet walked home thoughtfully together in the golden evening, and for a long time they were silent. “When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what's the first thing you say to yourself?”“What's for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”“I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting to-day?” said Piglet.Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It's the same thing,” he said.”

“On Wednesday, when the sky is blue,and I have nothing else to do,I sometimes wonder if it's true That who is what and what is who." - Winnie-the-Pooh”

“And now all the others are saying, "What about Us?" So perhaps the best thing to do is to stop writing Introductions and get on with the book.”

“The other day I met a man who didn't know where Tripoli was. Tripoli happened to come into the conversation, and he was evidently at a loss. "Let's see," he said. "Tripoli is just down by the - er - you know. What's the name of that place?" "That's right," I answered, "just opposite, Thingumabob. I could show you in a minute on a map. It's near - what do they call it?" At this moment the train stopped, and I got out and went straight home to look at my atlas.”

“My particular memory is of a quail-pie. Quails may be alright for Moses in the desert, but, if they are served in the form of pie at dinner, they should be distributed at a side-table, not handed round from guest to guest. The countess having shuddered at it and resumed her biscuit, it was left to me to make the opening excavation. The difficulty was to know where each quail began and ended: the job really wanted a professional quail-finder, who might have indicated the on the surface of the crust at which it would be most hopeful to dig for quails.”

“I wonder what Piglet is doing," thought Pooh. "I wish I were there to be doing it, too.”

“I don’t feel very much like Pooh today," said Pooh."There there," said Piglet. "I’ll bring you tea and honey until you do.”

“A proper sense of proportion leaves no room for superstition. A man says, "I have never been in a shipwreck," and becoming nervous touches wood. Why is he nervous? He has this paragraph before his eyes: "Among the deceased was Mr. ——. By a remarkable coincidence this gentleman had been saying only a few days before that he had never been in a shipwreck. Little did he think that his next voyage would falsify his words so tragically." It occurs to him that he has read paragraphs like that again and again. Perhaps he has. Certainly he has never read a paragraph like this: "Among the deceased was Mr. ——. By a remarkable coincidence this gentleman had never made the remark that he had not yet been in a shipwreck." Yet that paragraph could have been written truthfully thousands of times.”

“The truth is that Fate does not go out of its way to be dramatic. If you or I had the power of life and death in our hands, we should no doubt arrange some remarkably bright and telling effects. A man who spilt the salt callously would be drowned next week in the Dead Sea, and a couple who married in May would expire simultaneously in the May following. But Fate cannot worry to think out all the clever things that we should think out. It goes about its business solidly and unromantically, and by the ordinary laws of chance it achieves every now and then something startling and romantic. Superstition thrives on the fact that only the accidental dramas are reported.”

“If a statement is untrue, it is not the more respectable because it has been said in Latin.”

“It's your fault, Eeyore. You've never been to see any of us. You just stay here in this one corner of the Forest waiting for the others to come to you. Why don't you go to THEM sometimes?”

“Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.”

“Christopher Robin was home by this time, because it was the afternoon, and he was so glad to see them that they stayed there until very nearly tea-time, and then they had a Very Nearly tea, which is one you forget about afterwards, and hurried on to Pooh Corner, so as to see Eeyore before it was too late to have a Proper Tea with Owl.”

“That's right. You'll like Owl. He flew past a day or two ago and noticed me. He didn't actually say anything, mind you, but he knew it was me. Very friendly of him. Encouraging."Pooh and Piglet shuffled about a little and said, "Well, good-bye, Eeyore" as lingeringly as they could, but they had a long way to go, and wanted to be getting on."Good-bye," said Eeyore. "Mind you don't get blown away, little Piglet. You'd be missed. People would say `Where's little Piglet been blown to?' -- really wanting to know. Well, good-bye. And thank you for happening to pass me.”

“I knew when I met you an adventure was going to happen.”

“Piglet opened the letter box and climbed in. Then, having untied himself, he began to squeeze into the slit, through which in the old days when front doors were front doors, many an unexpected letter than WOL had written to himself, had come slipping.”

“Owl explained about the Necessary Dorsal Muscles. He had explained this to Pooh and Christopher Robin once before and had been waiting for a chance to do it again, because it is a thing you can easily explain twice before anybody knows what you are talking about.”

“It was a drowsy summer afternoon, and the Forest was full of gentle sounds, which all seemed to be saying to Pooh, 'Don't listen to Rabbit, listen to me.' So he got in a comfortable position for not listening to Rabbit.”

“Christopher Robin ... just said it had an "x."' 'It isn't their necks I mind,' said Piglet earnestly. 'It's their teeth.”

“There must be somebody there, because somebody must have said "Nobody.”

“But [Pooh] couldn't sleep. The more he tried to sleep the more he couldn't. He tried counting Sheep, which is sometimes a good way of getting to sleep, and, as that was no good, he tried counting Heffalumps. And that was worse. Because every Heffalump that he counted was making straight for a pot of Pooh's honey, and eating it all. For some minutes he lay there miserably, but when the five hundred and eighty-seventh Heffalump was licking its jaws, and saying to itself, "Very good honey this, I don't know when I've tasted better," Pooh could bear it no longer.”

“So perhaps the best thing to do is to stop writing Introductions and get on with the book.”