"I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit. "No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it on the way."

"...and then he and Roo pushed each other about in a friendly way, and Tigger accidentally knocked over one or two chairs by accident, and Roo accidentally knocked over one on purpose, and Kanga said, "Now then, run along.""

"Lucky we know the forest so well, or we might get lost," said Rabbit half an hour later, and he gave the careless laugh which you give when you know the Forest so well that you can't get lost. Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh!" he whispered. "Yes, Piglet?" "Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you."

"Pooh looked at his two paws. He knew that one of them was the right, and he knew that when you had decided which one of them was the right, then the other one was the left, but he never could remember how to begin."

"when you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it."

""I've got a sort of idea," said Pooh at last, "but I don't suppose it's a very good one." "I don't suppose it is either," said Eeyore."

"By the time it came to the edge of the Forest the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, "There is no hurry. We shall get there some day.""

"Owl took Christopher Robin's notice from Rabbit and looked at it nervously. He could spell his own name WOL, and he could spell Tuesday so that you knew it wasn't Wednesday, and he could read quite comfortably when you weren't looking over his shoulder and saying "Well?" all the time, and he could—"

"And he respects Owl, because you can't help respecting anyone who can spell Tuesday, even if he doesn't spell it right; but spelling isn't everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn't count."

"Piglet took Pooh's arm, in case Pooh was frightened."

"Yes," said Tigger, "they're very good flyers, Tiggers are. Strornry good flyers."

"Now it happened that Kanga had felt rather motherly that morning, and Wanting to Count Things — like Roo's vests, and how many pieces of soap there were left, and the two clean spots in Tigger's feeder."

"One day when Pooh was thinking, he thought he would go and see Eeyore, because he hadn't seen him since yesterday."

"Piglet looked up, and looked away again. And he felt so Foolish and Uncomfortable that he had almost decided to run away to Sea and be a Sailor, when suddenly he saw something."

"Pooh said good-bye affectionately to his fourteen pots of honey, and hoped they were fifteen; and he and Rabbit went out into the Forest."

""Shall I look too?" said Pooh, who was beginning to feel a little eleven o'clockish. And he found a small tin of condensed milk, and something seemed to tell him that Tiggers didn't like this, so he took it into a corner by itself, and went with it to see that nobody interrupted it."

"Nearly eleven o'clock," said Pooh happily. "You're just in time for a little smackerel of something."

"The more he looked inside the more Piglet wasn't there."

"When we asked Pooh what the opposite of an Introduction was, he said "The what of a what?" which didn't help us as much as we had hoped, but luckily Owl kept his head and told us that the Opposite of an Introduction, my dear Pooh, was a Contradiction; and, as he is very good at long words, I am sure that that's what it is."

"I found a little beetle, so that beetle was his name, And I called him Alexander and he answered just the same. I put him in a matchbox, and I kept him all the day...And Nanny let my beetle out Yes, Nanny let my beetle out She went and let my beetle out- And beetle ran away.She said she didn't mean it, and I never said she did, She said she wanted matches, and she just took off the lid She said that she was sorry, but it's difficult to catch An excited sort of beetle you've mistaken for a match.She said that she was sorry, and I really mustn't mind As there's lots and lots of beetles which she's certain we could find If we looked about the garden for the holes where beetles hid- And we'd get another matchbox, and write BEETLE on the lid.We went to all the places which a beetle might be near, And we made the sort of noises which a beetle likes to hear, And I saw a kind of something, and I gave a sort of shout: "A beetle-house and Alexander Beetle coming out!"It was Alexander Beetle I'm as certain as can be And he had a sort of look as if he thought it might be ME, And he had a kind of look as if he thought he ought to say: "I'm very, very sorry that I tried to run away."And Nanny's very sorry too, for you know what she did, And she's writing ALEXANDER very blackly on the lid, So Nan and me are friends, because it's difficult to catch An excited Alexander you've mistaken for a match."

"When I was One, I had just begun. When I was Two, I was nearly new. When I was Three I was hardly me. When I was Four, I was not much more. When I was Five, I was just alive. But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever, So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever."

"You can't stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes."

"We can't all and some of us don't. That's all there is to it."

"There are some people who begin the Zoo at the beginning, called WAYIN, and walk as quickly as they can past every cage until they get to the one called WAYOUT, but the nicest people go straight to the animal they love the most, and stay there."

"Isn't it funny How a bear likes honey? Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! I wonder why he does?"

"Hello Rabbit, is that you?" "Let's pretend it isn't", said Rabbit, "and see what happens."

"How sweet to be a cloud Floating in the blue."

"Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin."

""Good morning, Pooh Bear", said Eeyore gloomily. "If it is a good morning", he said. "Which I doubt", said he."

"Cottleston, cottleston, cottleston pie, A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly. Ask me a riddle and I reply, Cottleston, cottleston, cottleston pie."

"And how are you?", said Winnie-the-Pooh. (...) "Not very how", he said. "I don't seem to have felt at all how for a long time."

""H–hup!" said Roo accidentally. "Roo, dear!" said Kanga reproachfully. "Was it me?" asked Roo, a little surprised."

"Kanga said to Roo, "Drink up your milk first, dear, and talk afterwards." So Roo, who was drinking his milk, tried to say that he could do both at once . . . and had to be patted on the back and dried for quite a long time afterwards."

"It's a little Anxious," he said to himself, "to be a Very Small Animal Entirely Surrounded by Water."

"It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate awaiting them on this earth."

"I had ambition not only to go farther than any man had ever been before, but as far as it was possible for a man to go."

"They are very fascinating and very terrible, these tales of Conrad's in which he brings civilisation to the judgment of nature, and causes it to shake like a withering tree."

"Only the essential is true; Joseph Conrad, in a letter of advice, drives this home by recommending deletions, explaining that these words are "not essential and therefore not true to the fact.""

"I think some of the greatest writing has been also about writers like Conrad or Nabokov, who have illuminated and given us fresh views about the new countries they adopted."

"Melville doesn't sentimentalize the ocean and the sea's unfortunates. Snivel in a wet hanky like Lord Jim."

"It is fashionable among my friends to disparage [Conrad]. It is even necessary. Living in a world of literary politics where one wrong opinion often proves fatal, one writes carefully.... It is agreed by most of the people I know that Conrad is a bad writer, just as it is agreed that T. S. Eliot is a good writer. And now he is dead and I wish to God they would have taken some great, acknowledged technician of a literary figure and left him to write his bad stories."

"Maybe my favorite book in the world...I have never started a novel...without rereading Victory. It opens up the possibilities of a novel. It makes it seem worth doing."

"Well there is an assumption there that Conrad's...Heart of Darkness is great art and I don't accept that. Great art flourishes on problems or anguish or prejudice. But the role of the writer must be very clear. The writer must not be on the side of oppression. In other words there must be no confusion. I write about prejudice; I write about wickedness; I write about murder, I write about rape: but I must not be caught on the side of murder or rape. It is as simple as that."

"He feared neither God, nor devil, nor man, nor wind, nor sea, nor his own conscience. And I believe he hated everybody and everything. But I think he was afraid to die. I believe I am the only man who ever stood up to him."

"Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear."

"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness."

"The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement — but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims."

"Let a fool be made serviceable according to his folly."

"A man's most open actions have a secret side to them."

"Who knows what true loneliness is — not the conventional word, but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion."