Beatrix Potter Quotes

Beatrix Potter delights with playful animal tales and storytelling that spark childhood wonder.

17 quotes

1. I remember I used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when I was a child. What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and common-sense...

2. Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were - Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter.

3. Don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden: your father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.

4. This is a Tale about a tail - a tail that belonged to a little red squirrel, and his name was Nutkin.

5. It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is 'soporific.'

6. Thank God I have the seeing eye, that is to say, as I lie in bed I can walk step by step on the fells and rough land seeing every stone and flower and patch of bog and cotton pass where my old legs will never take me again.

7. This is a fierce bad rabbit; look at his savage whiskers, and his claws and his turned-up tail.

8. All outward forms of religion are almost useless, and are the causes of endless strife. Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself and never mind the rest.

9. Peter lost one of his shoes among the cabbages, and the other shoe amongst the potatoes.

10. I think if she lived in A little shoe-house That little old woman was Surely a mouse!

11. We cannot stay home all our lives, we must present ourselves to the world and we must look upon it as an adventure.

12. The place is changed now, and many familiar faces are gone, but the greatest change is myself. I was a child then, I had no idea what the world would be like. I wished to trust myself on the waters and the sea. Everything was romantic in my imagination. The woods were peopled by the mysterious good folk. The Lords and Ladies of the last century walked with me along the overgrown paths, and picked the old fashioned flowers among the box and rose hedges of the garden.

13. There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you.

14. For quiet, solitary and observant children create their own world and live in it, nourishing their imaginations on the material at hand.

15. I think prejudice and tradition count for three-quarters in matters of religion.

16. Then Mrs. Tiggy-winkle made tea - a cup for herself and a cup for Lucie. They sat before the fire on a bench and looked sideways at one another. Mrs. Tiggy-winkle's hand, holding the tea-cup, was very very brown, and very very wrinkly with the soap-suds; and all through her gown and her cap, there were HAIRPINS sticking wrong end out; so that Lucie didn't like to sit too near her.

17. I have just made stories to please myself, because I never grew up.