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- 23-Apr-19 - Dave on Letter to Baron von Stein, Dammartin le St. Père (7 Jan 1814).
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Quotations about fantasy
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
What Mr. Howells said of the American theater is true of the whole American attitude toward life. “A tragedy with a happy ending” is exactly what the child wants before he goes to sleep: the reassurance that “all’s well with the world” as he lies in his cozy nursery. It is a good thing that the child should receive this reassurance; but as long as he needs it he remains a child, and the world he lives in is a nursery-world. Things are not always and everywhere well with the world, and each man has to find it out as he grows up. It is the finding out that makes him grow, and until he has faced the fact and digested the lesson he is not grown up — he is still in the nursery.
Edith Wharton (1862-1937) American novelist
French Ways and Their Meaning, ch. 4 “Intellectual Honesty” (1919)
(Source)
Commenting on William Dean Howells' comment to her on American taste in theater and drama: "What the American public wants is a tragedy with a happy ending."
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away,
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing poetry.Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) American poet
“There is no frigate like a book” (c. 1873)
Nothin’g sa’ys q’uality fantas’y l’ike misuse’d apos’tro’phes.
James Nicoll (b. 1961) Canadian reviewer, editor
“SFBC 1999 June,” rec.arts.sf.written, Usenet (11 Feb 2004)
(Source)
Review of James Clemens's Wit'ch Storm.
Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
(Attributed)
I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, “The game’s afoot!” I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin.
I wanted Prester John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be — instead of the tawdry, lousy fouled-up mess it is.
I had had one chance — for ten minutes yesterday afternoon. Helen of Troy, whatever your true name may be — And I had known it … and I had let it slip away.
Maybe one chance is all you ever get.
Robert A. Heinlein (1909-1988) American writer
Glory Road, ch. 3 (1963)
Lovers and madmen have seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, sc. 1, l. 4 (1605)
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of the facts and evidence.
John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797-1801)
“Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials” (4 Dec 1770)
