“The FlowersAll the names I know from nurse:Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse,Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,And the Lady Hollyhock.Fairy places, fairy things,Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,Tiny trees for tiny dames--These must all be fairy names!Tiny woods below whose boughsShady fairies weave a house;Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,Where the braver fairies climb!Fair are grown-up people's trees,But the fairest woods are these;Where, if I were not so tall,I should live for good and all”

“He was in a fairy kingdom where everything was possible.He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm like the earth. It was clearing, and over the tops of the trees clouds were swiftly sailing as if unveiling the stars.”

“Away with them, away; we should not believe fairy stories if we wish to be good. Think of them as persons from the fairy wood.”

“I remember a time where Trolls were a fictitious monster from fairy tales, not arseholes on the internet looking for attention.”

“To the Hesitating Purchaser:"If sailor tales to sailor tunes, Storm and adventure, heat and cold,If schooners, islands, and maroons And Buccaneers and buried GoldAnd all the old romance, retold, Exactly in the ancient way,Can please, as me they pleased of old, The wiser youngsters of to-day:-So be it, and fall on! If not, If studious youth no longer crave,His ancient appetites forgot, Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,Or Cooper of the wood and wave: So be it, also! And may IAnd all my pirates share the grave, Where these and their creations lie!”

“The rain is falling all around,It falls on field and tree,It rains on the umbrellas here,And on the ships at sea.”

“What am I to call it? Diffidence? The fear of ridicule? Inverted vanity? What matters names, if it has brought me to this? I could never bear to be bustling about nothing; I was ashamed of this toy kingdom from the first; I could not tolerate that people should fancy I believed in a thing so patently absurd! I would do nothing that cannot be done smiling. I have a sense of humour, forsooth! I must know better than my Maker. And it was the same thing in my marriage," he added more hoarsely. "I did not believe this girl could care for me; I must not intrude; I must preserve the foppery of my indifference. What an impotent picture!""Ay, we have the same blood," moralised Gotthold. "You are drawing, with fine strokes, the character of the born sceptic.""Sceptic?—coward!" cried Otto. "Coward is the word. A springless, putty-hearted, cowering coward!”