Beagle Quotes & Sayings

The horns came riding in like the rainbow masts of silver ships. — Peter S. Beagle

She did not look anything like a horned horse, as unicorns are often pictured, being smaller and cloven-hoofed, and possessing that oldest, wildest grace that horses have never had, that deer have only in a shy, thin imitation and goats in dancing mockery. — Peter S. Beagle

He is a great enough magician to tap our most common nightmares, daydreams and twilight fancies, but he never invented them either: he found them a place to live, a green alternative to each day's madness here in a poisoned world. We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers - thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams. — Peter S. Beagle

Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale. — Peter S. Beagle

The king is always watching her out of his pale eyes, wondering what she is, and the king's son wounds himself with loving her and wonders who she is. And every day she searches the sea and the sky, the castle and the courtyard, the keep and the king's face, for something she cannot always remember. What is it, what is it that she is seeking in this strange place? She knew a moment ago, but she was forgotten. — Peter S. Beagle

I am a good runner. There are many faster, but not so many for whom it has been as necessary to learn to become nothing but flight. — Peter S. Beagle

Whatever can die is beautiful - more beautiful than a unicorn, who lives forever, and who is the most beautiful creature in the world. Do you understand me? — Peter S. Beagle

I was facing him before the last word was out, but I should have been dead by then. In a way I did die, right there, all that time ago, and this is a ghost who has been telling you stories and drinking your wine. You don't understand. Never mind. — Peter S. Beagle

The most professional curse ever snarled or croaked or thundered can have no effect on a pure heart. — Peter S. Beagle

Why did they go away, do you think? If there ever were such things."
"Who knows? Times change. Would you call this age a good one for unicorns?"
"No, but I wonder if any man before us ever thought his time a good time for unicorns. — Peter S. Beagle

Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name. — Peter S. Beagle

Pervy and redundant, don't you think?" I asked the big gay cop, who wouldn't know a va-jay-jay if it bounced up to him and sang the "Star-Spangled Banner." (You ever notice that hardly anything besides the "Star-Spangled Banner" is spangled? There's no, like, the Raisin-Spangled Scone, or the Flea-Spangled Beagle. I'm just saying.)
Being the Journal of Abby Normal — Christopher Moore

A rhinoceros is as ugly as a human being, and it too is going to die, but at least it never thinks that it is beautiful. — Peter S. Beagle

I am no king, and I am no lord,
And I am no soldier at-arms," said he.
"I'm none but a harper, and a very poor harper,
That am come hither to wed with ye."
"If you were a lord, you should be my lord,
And the same if you were a thief," said she.
"And if you are a harper, you shall be my harper,
For it makes no matter to me, to me,
For it makes no matter to me."
"But what if it prove that I am no harper?
That I lied for your love most monstrously?"
"Why, then I'll teach you to play and sing,
For I dearly love a good harp," said she. — Peter S. Beagle

I would enter your sleep if I could, and guard you there, and slay the thing that hounds you, as I would if it had the courage to face me in fair daylight. But I cannot come in unless you dream of me. Before — Peter S. Beagle

Unicorns know naught of shame, or need, or doubt, or debt;
But mortals, as you may have noticed, take what they can get. — Peter S. Beagle

Prodigies began to waken somewhere southwest of his twelfth rib, and he himself- still mirroring the Lady Amalthea- began to shine. — Peter S. Beagle

The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined my whole career; yet it depended on so small a circumstance as my uncle offering to drive me 30 miles to Shrewsbury, which few uncles would have done, and on such a trifle as the shape of my nose. — Charles Darwin

The question at this age is what kind of dog you will shortly resemble. She will be a beagle, Prue a terrier. Pamela will be an Afghan, or something equally unearthly. — Margaret Atwood

The beagle and the kobold approached, walking out of the dusty distance. — Terry Pratchett

I love you, more, I think, than I know, but our kind of love isn't a sword. It's a light. Not a fire. A small light, just bright enough to read love letters by and keep the animals at a growling distance. In time it will go out. All lights go out. So do all fires, if it's any comfort. Love me, and look at me, and remember me, as I'll remember you. — Peter S. Beagle

She loved him too. That's why she let him go. — Peter S. Beagle

Still the king would have turned away, but Schmendrick touched his arm and leaned near. "It's true, you know," he whispered. "But for him
but for them all
the tale would have worked out quite another way, and who can say that the ending would have been even as happy as this? You must be their king, and you must rule them as kindly as you would a braver and more faithful folk. For they are your fate. — Peter S. Beagle

She is a story with no ending, happy or sad. She can never belong to anything mortal enough to want her. Most — Peter S. Beagle

Any woman can weep without tears," she answered over her shoulder, "and most can heal with their hands. It depends on the wound. She is a woman, Your Highness, and that's riddle enough — Peter S. Beagle

Under the moon, the road that ran from the edge of her forest gleamed like water, but when she stepped out onto it, away from the trees, she felt how hard it was, and how long. She almost turned back then; but instead she took a deep breath of the woods air that still drifted to her, and held it in her mouth like a flower, as long as she could. — Peter S. Beagle

The magician was studying her face with his green eyes. "Your face is wet," he said worriedly. "I hope that's spray. If you've become human enough to cry, then no magic in the world - oh, it must be spray. Come with me. It had better be spray. — Peter S. Beagle

The moon was gone, but to the magician's eyes the unicorn was the moon, cold and white and very old, lighting his way to safety, or to madness. — Peter S. Beagle

I've always thought cemeteries were like cities. There are streets, avenues - you've seen them, I think, Michael. There are blocks, too, and house numbers, slums and ghettos, middle-class sections and small palaces. — Peter S. Beagle

When I was very young every grownup was a hero. It's been all downhill since then, and I have only two left. — Peter S. Beagle

If sacrificing herself for her husband's sake were to prove the last thing that Jassi ever did willingly for her new master ... well, then, so be it, however bitter the taste to Carcharos. Pride had always been his substitute for honor, but his pride was so long gone from him that he could barely recall the feel of it. And so be that, too. — Peter S. Beagle

There's more meaning than magic to this. The — Peter S. Beagle

Sing to me," she said. "That would be valiant, to raise your voice in this dark, lonely place, and it will be useful as well. Sing to me, sing loudly-drown out my dreams, keep me from remembering whatever wants me to remember it. Sing to me, my lord prince, if it please you. It may not seem a hero's task, but I would be glad of it. — Peter S. Beagle

No, he repeated, and this time the word tolled in another voice, a king's voice ... whose grief was not for what he did not have, but for what he could not give. — Peter S. Beagle

I will kill you if you set me free,' the eyes said. 'Set me free. — Peter S. Beagle

It's like marriage. The race there is between total knowledge of each other and death. If death comes first, it's considered a successful marriage. — Peter S. Beagle

THE VOYAGE OF THE SPACE BEAGLE — A.E. Van Vogt

Ah, love may be strong, but a habit is stronger,
And I knew when I loved by the way I behaved. — Peter S. Beagle

Unicorn. Old French, unicorne. Latin, unicornis. Literally, one-horned: unus, one and cornu,a horn. A fabulous animal resembling a horse with one horn. — Peter S. Beagle

There are no happy endings, because nothing ends. — Peter S. Beagle

If she had touched me," he said very softly, "I would have been hers and not my own, not ever again. I wanted her to touch me but I could not let her. No cat will. We let human beings caress us because it is pleasant enough and calms them - but not her. The price is more than a cat can pay. — Peter S. Beagle

I know how to live here, I know how everything smells, and tastes, and is. What could I ever search for in the world, except this again? — Peter S. Beagle

I have been mortal, and some part of me is mortal yet. I am full of tears and hunger and the fear of death, although I cannot weep, and I want nothing, and I cannot die. I am not like the others now, for no unicorn was ever born who could regret, but I do. I regret. — Peter S. Beagle

The tune was wailing and mournful, almost flagrantly so, and the total effect was of a heartbroken piccolo being parted forever from its bagpipe lover. — Peter S. Beagle

Once you had your man, you let all your accomplishments go. You don't sew or sing any more, you haven't illuminated a manuscript in years - and — Peter S. Beagle

I feel a whole country growing inside me, thousands of years, millions of people, stupid, crazy, shrewd people, and all of them me. I never felt like that before, I never felt that there was anything inside me, even myself. — Peter S. Beagle

Take me with you. For laughs, for luck, for the unknown. Take me with you. — Peter S. Beagle

The dead," he had said once, "need nothing from the living, and the living can give nothing to the dead." At twenty-two, it had sounded precocious; at thirty-four, it sounded mature, and this pleased Michael very much. He had liked being mature and reasonable. He disliked ritual and pomposity, routine and false emotion, rhetoric and sweeping gestures. Crowds made him nervous. Pageantry offended him. Essentially a romantic, he had put away the trappings of romance, although he had loved them deeply and never known. — Peter S. Beagle

Alma didn't want Isabel to start singing the praises of their pet, a rescue beagle, or she wouldn't shush until sundown.
"I've found the missing lady," Alma said. "Say welcome home, Betsy Sweet. — Ed Lynskey

She was one woman who knew what to do with a slight moral edge. The — Peter S. Beagle

Men have to have heroes, but no man can ever be as big as the need, and so a legend grows around a grain of truth, like a pearl. — Peter S. Beagle

I am what I am. I would tell you what you want to know if I could, for you have been kind to me. But I am a cat, and no cat anywhere ever gave anyone a straight answer. — Peter S. Beagle

I know exactly how you feel," Schmendrick said eagerly. The unicorn looked at him out of dark, endless eyes, and he smiled nervously and looked at his hands. "It's a rare man who is taken for what he truly is," he said. "There is much misjudgment in the world. Now I knew you for a unicorn when I first saw you, and I know that I am your friend. Yet you take me for a clown, or a clod, or a betrayer, and so must I be if you see me so. The magic on you is only magic and will vanish as soon as you are free, but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes. We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream. Still I have read, or heard it sung, that unicorns when time was young, could tell the difference 'twixt the two - the false shining and the true, the lips' laugh and the heart's rue. — Peter S. Beagle

O meal is good enough to justify all the money and effort wasted in preparing it. It is an illusion and an expense. Live as I do, undeceived. — Peter S. Beagle

Tell you something," the raven said. "I was flying over the Midwest once." He stopped abruptly, closed his eyes for a moment, opened them, and began again. "I was flying over the Midwest. Iowa or Illinois, or some place like that. And I saw this big damn seagull. Right in the middle of Iowa, a seagull. And he was flying around in big, wide circles, real sweeping circles, the way a seagull flies, flapping his wings just enough to keep on the updrafts. Every time he saw water he'd go flying down toward it, yelling, "I found it! I found it!" The poor sonofabitch was looking for the ocean. And every time he saw water, he thought that was the ocean. He didn't know anything about ponds or lakes or anything. All the water he ever saw was the ocean. He thought that was all the water there was. — Peter S. Beagle

Sitting up all night would be pointless if somebody you loved wasn't sitting up with you, picking out music to play and helping you kill the bourbon. Walking by yourself in the rain is for college kids who think loneliness makes poets. — Peter S. Beagle

I love you," Laura said hopelessly. "I'd love you if you were afraid of everything in the world. — Peter S. Beagle

You pile of stones, you waste, you desolation, I'll stuff you with misery till it comes out of your eyes. I'll change your heart into green grass, and all you love into a sheep. I'll turn you into a bad poet with dreams. — Peter S. Beagle

I had a good time that night, too," Michael said, "but I kept thinking, This is forever. This is forever. You will have this good time again and again, a million times over, until it will be like a play in which you and Laura and a few fugitive lives sit around an imaginary fire and talk and sing songs and love each other and sometimes throw imaginary brands at the eyes blinking beyond the circle of imaginary firelight. And then I thought - and this is where I sounded just like a real philosopher - And even when you admit that you know every line in the play and every song that will be sung, even when you know that this evening spent with friends is pleasant and joyful because you remember it as pleasant and joyful and wouldn't change it for the world, even when you know that anything you feel for these good friends has no more reality than a dream faithfully remembered every night for a thousand years - even then it goes on. Even then it has just begun. — Peter S. Beagle

The woman I loved died because I did not love her enough - what greater sin is there than that?
(Uncle Chaim and Aunt Fifke and the Angel) — Peter S. Beagle

The sight of men filled her with an old, slow, strange mixture of tenderness and terror. — Peter S. Beagle

Writing has nothing to do with publishing. Nothing. People get totally confused about that. You write because you have to - you write because you can't not write. The rest is show-business. I can't state that too strongly. Just write - worry about the rest of it later, if you worry at all. What matters is what happens to you while you're writing the story, the poem, the play. The rest is show-business. — Peter S. Beagle

and even the feral, near-wild Third Cat, whose true name he had never discovered, as one has to do with cats, trailed — Peter S. Beagle

She came very close, and looking into my eyes, she said, "My Jenny," and then she bent her head and kissed me - here, on the left-hand corner of my mouth. And nobody knows better than I that I couldn't have felt anything, because Tamsin was a ghost - but nobody but me knows what I felt. And I'll always know. — Peter S. Beagle

A Clock is not time; it's numbers and springs. Pay it no mind. — Peter S. Beagle

How can it be?" she wondered. "I suppose I could understand it if men had simply forgotten unicorns ( ... ) But not to see them at all, to look at them and see something else - what do they look to one another, then? What do trees look like to them, or houses, or real horses, or their own children? — Peter S. Beagle

His mind, grooved through the uncounted ages to ultimate despair, soared up insanely. His legs and arms glistened like tongues of living fire as they writhed and twisted in the light that blazed from the portholes. His mouth, a gash in his caricature of a human head, slavered a white frost that floated away in little frozen globules. — A.E. Van Vogt

What do men know? Because they have seen no unicorns for a while does not mean we have all vanished. — Peter S. Beagle

I've had worse, and I'll have better one day. This is not the end. — Peter S. Beagle

There are people,' he said, 'who give, and there are people who take. There are people who create, people who destroy, and people who don't do anything and drive the other two kinds crazy. It's born in you, whether you give or take, and that's the way you are. Ravens bring things to people. We're like that. It's our nature. We don't like it. We'd much rather be eagles, or swans, or even one of those moronic robins, but we're ravens and there you are. Ravens don't feel right without somebody to bring things to, and when we do find somebody we realize what a silly business it was in the first place." He made a sound between a chuckle and a cough. "Ravens are pretty neurotic birds. We're closer to people than any other bird, and we're bound to them all our lives, but we don't have to like them. You think we brought Elijah food because we liked him? He was an old man with a dirty beard. — Peter S. Beagle

Forget it, Jonathan, and go back to sleep. And before you go to sleep, pray that no well-meaning god ever makes you immortal. — Peter S. Beagle

Man searches constantly for identity, he thought as he trotted along the gravel path. He has no real proof of this existence except for the reaction of other people to that fact. So he listens very closely to what people say to one another about him, whether it's good or bad, because it indicates that he lives in the same world they do, and that all his fears about being invisible, impotent, lacking some mysterious dimension that other people have, are groundless. — Peter S. Beagle

So you're an angel, fine, that's terrific. Now give me back my shadows. (Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel) — Peter S. Beagle

The universe lies to our senses and they lie to us, and how can we ourselves be anything but liars? For myself, I trust neither message nor messenger; neither what I am told, nor what I see. There may be truth somewhere, but it never gets down to me — Peter S. Beagle

Lir said, "It is my right. A hero is entitled to his happy ending, when it comes at last." But Schmendrick answered, "This is not the end, either for you or for her. — Peter S. Beagle

He had never missed God or the hope of heaven, but he had dearly wanted confession to rest his mind, Communion to let him touch something beyond Father Krone's dry, shaky hand, and holy water to taste like starlight. — Peter S. Beagle

There's a phrase, "sitzfleisch", which means just plain sitting on your ass and getting it done. Just showing up for work. My uncle Raphael was a painter, and he used to say, "If the muse is late for work, start without her". You have to be there. You have to be there, and do it, and grind it out, even when it is grinding and you know you're probably going to rewrite all this tomorrow. — Peter S. Beagle

There never is a happy ending because nothing ever ends. — Peter S. Beagle

I am a king's daughter, And if I cared to care, The moon that has no mistress Would flutter in my hair. No one dares to cherish What I choose to crave. Never have I hungered, For that I did not have I am a kings daughter, And I grow old within The prison of my person, The shackles of my skin. And I would run away And beg from door to door, Just to see your shadow Once, and never more. — Peter S. Beagle

This world, that world, doesn't matter. You never make people to see what you see, hear, feel what you feel. Notes don't do it, words don't do it, paints, bronze, marble, nothing. All you can do, you maybe get it a little close, a little closer. But right, like you're talking? No. — Peter S. Beagle

Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back. — Peter S. Beagle

Marveling at his own boldness, he said softly, I would enter your sleep if I could, and guard you there, and slay the thing that hounds you, as I would if it had the courage to face me in fair daylight. But I cannot come in unless you dream of me. — Peter S. Beagle

When I was eighteen or twenty, I knew everything except what I wanted. I knew all about people, and poetry, and love, and music, and politics, and baseball, and history, and I played pretty good jazz piano. And then I went traveling, because I felt that I might have missed something and it would be a good idea to learn it before I got my master's degree. (...) And the older I grew, and the farther I traveled, the younger I grew and the less I knew. I could feel it happening to me. I could actually walk down a dirty street and feel all my wisdom slipping away from me, all the things I wrote term papers about. — Peter S. Beagle

And Hagsgate, alas, paid her no heed. She was treated politely and referred to the proper authorities, whereupon she flew into a fury and screamed that in our eagerness to make no enemies at all, we had now made two. — Peter S. Beagle

He felt as if he had told a joke and they had missed the punchline and were leaning to him, wating for the kicker, the all-illuminating kicker that is found only in jokes; or as if someone had asked, "How you doing?" and the spring-and-strap arrangement in him had rusted and broken and he would never again be able to answer perfunctory questions the way other people did. — Peter S. Beagle

He really would have done all that for her, you see, and done it believing he'd burn in hell forever for doing it. He hadn't done it, and wouldn't had made her his anyway, but you see why he'd have figured it did. Or maybe I saw it anyway, at the time. He was a maniac and a monster, but people don't love like that anymore. Or maybe it's only the maniacs and monsters who do. I don't know. — Peter S. Beagle

No, my friend," he responded finally. "I am not God, no more than you. But I think you and I are equally part of God as we stand here," and he swept his arm wide to take in all the slow, dark shiver of the sea as it breathed under the blue and silver morning. "Surely we two are not merely surrounded by this divine splendor - we both belong to it, we are of it, now and for always. How else should it be? — Peter S. Beagle

Dealing with morons ... is like teaching Hindu to a beagle. — Lee Child

All lives are composed of two basic elements," the squirrel said, "purpose and poetry. By being ourselves, squirrel and raven, we fulfill the first requirement, you in flight and I in my tree. But there is poetry in the meanest of lives, and if we leave it unsought we leave ourselves unrealized. A life without food, without shelter, without love, a life lived in the rain - this is nothing beside a life without poetry. — Peter S. Beagle

I always say perseverance is nine-tenths of any art - not that it's much help to be nine-tenths an artist, of course. — Peter S. Beagle

A hero is entitled to his happy ending, when it comes at last. — Peter S. Beagle

On April 16, 2010, 34 Chinese environmental organizations, including Friends of Nature, the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, and Green Beagle, questioned heavy metal pollution in a letter sent to CEO Steve Jobs. — Ma Jun

I've never really undestood," the unicorn mused as the man picked himself up," what you dream of doing with me, once you've caught me."
The man leaped again, and she slipped away from him like rain. "I don't think you know yourself," she said. — Peter S. Beagle

There are honest people in the world, but only because the devil considers their asking prices ridiculous. — Peter S. Beagle

But still I feel I waste a lot of time leaning on my elbow and thinking to myself, alright sucker, now what? — Peter S. Beagle

I love whom I love," Prince Lir repeated firmly. "You have no power over anything that matters. — Peter S. Beagle

This creature is the Pooka. Pay no mind to the shape he wears, for he's none of his own, and no soul either. Ware him ever, trust him never, but when the wind's right he has his uses. Never forget that you will never know him. The Pooka's mystery even to the Pooka. — Peter S. Beagle

AGATHA, an old Labradoodle ATHENA, a brown teacup Poodle ATTICUS, an imposing Neapolitan Mastiff, with cascading jowls BELLA, a Great Dane, Athena's closest pack mate BENJY, a resourceful and conniving Beagle BOBBIE, an unfortunate Duck Toller DOUGIE, a Schnauzer, friend to Benjy FRICK, a Labrador Retriever FRACK, a Labrador Retriever, Frick's litter mate LYDIA, a Whippet and Weimaraner cross, tormented and nervous MAJNOUN, a black Poodle, briefly referred to as 'Lord Jim' or simply 'Jim' MAX, a mutt who detests poetry PRINCE, a mutt who composes poetry, also called Russell or Elvis RONALDINHO, a mutt who deplores the condescension of humans ROSIE, — Andre Alexis

We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream. — Peter S. Beagle

My dad was a different person when he lectured: his eyes sparkled, his lips turned upward ... 'Think what it must have been like for Darwin, two hundred years ago. He took that voyage on the Beagle [1831] expecting to document the natural world and he stumbled across something impossible. A creature who could defy the laws of physics
straight out of the pages of mythology ... In that one moment, the entire landscape of scientific investigation was drastically and irrevocably changed. The impossible became a widespread scientific reality, as omnipresent as gravity and in some cases, nearly as hard to see. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes