Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Fairies
Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together,
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!
William Allingham—The Fairies.
Do you believe in fairies? If you believe clap your hands.
Don’t let Tinker die.
Barrie—Peter Pan. (“Tinker Bell” thought she could get well again if children believed in fairies.)
When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a million pieces, and they all went skipping about. That was the beginning of fairies.
Barrie—Peter Pan.
Whenever a child says “I don’t believe in fairies” there’s a little fairy somewhere that falls right down dead.
Barrie—Peter Pan.
Bright Eyes, Light Eyes! Daughter of a Fay!
I had not been a married wife a twelvemonth and a day,
I had not nursed my little one a month upon my knee,
When down among the blue bell banks rose elfins three times three:
They griped me by the raven hair, I could not cry for fear,
They put a hempen rope around my waist and dragged me here;
They made me sit and give thee suck as mortal mothers can,
Bright Eyes, Light Eyes! strange and weak and wan!
Robert Buchanan—The Fairy Foster Mother.
Then take me on your knee, mother;
And listen, mother of mine.
A hundred fairies danced last night,
And the harpers they were nine.
Mary Howitt—The Fairies of the Caldon Low. St. 5.
Nothing can be truer than fairy wisdom. It is as true as sunbeams.
Douglas Jerrold—Specimens of Jerrold’s Wit. Fairy Tales.
Nicht die Kinder bloss speist man mit Märchen ab.
It is not children only that one feeds with fairy tales.
Lessing—Nathan der Weise. III. 6.
***Or fairy elves,
Whose midnight revels by a forest side
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees, while overhead the Moon
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the Earth
Wheels her pale course; they, on their mirth and dance
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear;
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. I. L. 781.
The dances ended, all the fairy train
For pinks and daisies search’d the flow’ry plain.
Pope—January and May. L. 624.
This is the fairy-land; O spite of spites!
We talk with goblins, owls and sprites.
Comedy of Errors. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 191.
Fairies, black, grey, green, and white,
You moonshine revellers, and shades of night.
Merry Wives of Windsor. Act V. Sc. 5. L. 41.
They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die:
I’ll wink and couch: no man their works must eye.
Merry Wives of Windsor. Act V. Sc. 5. L. 51.
Set your heart at rest:
The fairyland buys not the child of me.
Midsummer Night’s Dream. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 121.
In silence sad,
Trip we after night’s shade:
We the globe can compass soon.
Swifter than the wand’ring moon.
Midsummer Night’s Dream. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 100.
O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the forefinger of an alderman.
Romeo and Juliet. Act I. Sc. 4. L. 54.
Where the bee sucks, there suck I;
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly.
Tempest. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 88. Song.
Her berth was of the wombe of morning dew
And her conception of the joyous prime.
Spenser—Faerie Queene. Bk. III. Canto VI. St. 3.
But light as any wind that blows
So fleetly did she stir,
The flower, she touch’d on, dipt and rose,
And turned to look at her.
Tennyson—The Talking Oak. St. 33.