″ ‘What must be, must be. The luck of the house hangs on that clock. Its maker spent a good part of his life over it, and his last words were that it would bring good luck to the house that owned it, but that trouble would follow its silence. It’s my belief,’ she added solemnly, ‘that it’s a fairy clock, neither more nor less, for good luck it has brought there’s no denying.’ ”
“You would never have found out how extraordinary it was if it hadn’t hindered you from doing what you wanted to do. You see how self-love keeps us from knowing our own defects of mind and body. Our reason tries in vain to show them to us; we refuse to see them till we find them in the way of our interests.”
“I wish you would leave off mentioning my nose. It cannot matter to you what it is like. I am quite satisfied with it, and have no wish to have it shorter. One must take what is given one.”
“Assure yourselves, O King and Queen, that you daughter shall not die of this disaster. it is true, I have no power to undo entirely what my elder has done. The Princess shall indeed pierce her hand with a spindle; but, instead of dying, she shall only fall into a profound sleep, which shall last one hundred years, at the expiration of which a King’s son shall come and awake her.”
“Fairy Bread
Come up here, O dusty feet!
Here is fairy bread to eat,
Here in my retiring room,
Children, you may dine
On the golden smell of broom
And the shade of the pine;
And when you have eaten well,
Fairy stories hear and tell.”
“Bulbo had carried a rose in his mouth all the time of the dismal ceremony. It was a fairy rose, and he was told by his mother that he ought never to part with it. So he had kept it between his teeth, even when he laid his poor head upon the block, hoping vaguely that some chance would turn up in his favour.”
“Now Angelica little knew that the ring which Giglio had given her was a fairy ring: if a man wore it, it made all the women in love with him; if a woman, all the gentlemen.”