The Chronicles of Narnia: The Horse and His Boy Quotes

“But one of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no one to force you any more you find you have almost lost the power of forcing yourself.”

″‘Bree,’ said Aravis, who was not very interested in the cut of his tail,‘I’ve been wanting to ask you something for a long time. Why do you keep on swearing By The Lion and By The Lion’s Mane? I thought you hated lions.’ ‘So I do,’ answered Bree. ‘But when I speak of THE Lion, of course I mean Aslan, the great deliverer of Narnia who drove away the Witch and the Winter. All Narnians swear by him.’ ‘But is he a lion?’ ‘No, no, of course not,’ said Bree in a rather shocked voice. ‘All the stories about him in Tashbaan say he is,’ replied Aravis. ‘And if he isn’t a lion why do you call him a lion?’ ‘Well, you’d hardly understand it at your age,’ said Bree.”

″‘Child,’ said the Lion, ‘I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.‘”

“The light was too bad now for Shasta to see much of the cat except that it was very big and very solemn. It looked as if it might have lived for long, long years among the Tombs, alone. It’s eyes made you think it knew secrets it would not tell.”

″‘It is very true,’ said Edmund. ‘But even a traitor may mend. I have known one that did.’ And he looked very thoughtful.”

″‘Why do you keep talking to my horse instead of to me?’ said the girl. ‘Excuse me, Tarkheena,’ said Bree (with just the slightest backward tilt of his ears), ‘but that’s Calormene talk. We’re free Narnians, Hwin and I, and I suppose, if you’re running away to Narnia, you want to be one too. In that case Hwin isn’t your horse any longer. One might just as well say you’re her human.’ The girl opened her mouth to speak and then stopped. Obviously she had not quite seen it in that light before.”

″‘When this news was brought to me ...[I] caused my mare Hwin to be saddled and took with me a sharp dagger... And when my father’s house was out of sight and I was come to a green open place in a certain wood where there were no dwellings of men, I dismounted from Hwin my mare and took out the dagger. Then I parted my clothes where I thought the readiest way lay to my heart and I prayed to all the gods that as soon as I was dead I might find myself with my brother. After that I shut my eyes and prepared to drive the dagger into my heart.‘”

“A dozen different plans went through his head, all wretched ones, and at last he fixed on the worst plan of all. He decided to wait till it was dark and then go back to the river and ... set out for Mount Pire alone, trusting for his direction to the line he had drawn that morning in the sand. It was a crazy idea and if he had read as many books as you have about journeys over deserts he would never have dreamed of it. But Shasta had read no books at all.”

“Although Lasaraleen had said she was dying to hear Aravis’s story, she showed no sign of really wanting to hear it at all. She was, in fact, much better at talking than at listening... The fuss she made about choosing the dresses nearly drove Aravis mad. She remembered now that Lasaraleen had always been like that, interested in clothes and parties and gossip.”

“Shasta’s heart fainted at these words for he felt he had no strength left. And he writhed inside at what seemed the cruelty and unfairness of the demand. He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.”

″‘My good Horse, you’ve lost nothing but your self-conceit. No, no, cousin. Don’t put back your ears and shake your mane at me. If you are really so humbled as you sounded a minute ago, you must learn to listen to sense. You’re not quite the great Horse you had come to think, from living among poor dumb horses. Of course you were braver and cleverer than them. You could hardly help being that. It doesn’t follow that you’ll be anyone very special in Narnia. But as long as you know you’re nobody special, you’ll be a very decent sort of Horse, on the whole.‘”

″‘I was the lion ... I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the Horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.‘”

″‘Please, your Majesty,’ said Shasta to King Edmund, ‘I was no traitor, really I wasn’t. And I couldn’t help hearing your plans. But I’d never have dreamed of telling them to your enemies.’ ‘I know now that you were no traitor, boy,’ said King Edmund, laying his hand on Shasta’s head. ‘But if you would not be taken for one, another time try not to hear what’s meant for other ears. But all’s well.‘”

″‘It was I who wounded you,’ said Aslan. ‘I am the only lion you met in all your journeyings. Do you know why I tore you?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘The scratches on your back, tear for tear, throb for throb, blood for blood, were equal to the stripes laid on the back of your stepmother’s slave because of the drugged sleep you cast upon her. You needed to know what it felt like.’

″‘You have appealed to Tash,’ said Aslan. ‘And in the temple of Tash you shall be healed. You must stand before the altar of Tash in Tashbaan at the great Autumn Feast this year and there, in the sight of all Tashbaan, your ass’s shape will fall from you and all men will know you for Prince Rabadash.‘”

“Aravis also had many quarrels (and, I’m afraid even fights) with Cor, but they always made it up again: so that years later, when they were grown up they were so used to quarreling and making it up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently.”

“When things go wrong, you’ll find they usually go on getting worse for some time; but when things once start going right they often go on getting better and better.”

“Do not by any means destroy yourself, for if you live you may yet have good fortune, but all the dead are dead like.”

“Then Hwin, though shaking all over, gave a strange little neigh and trotted across to the Lion. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘you’re so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I’d sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else.‘”

″‘In other words,’ it continued, ‘you can’t ride. That’s a drawback. I’ll have to teach you as we go along. If you can’t ride, can you fall?’ ‘I suppose anyone can fall,’ said Shasta. ‘I mean can you fall and get up again without crying and mount again and fall again and yet not be afraid of falling?‘”