The Once and Future King Quotes

“Oh, dear, oh, dear, I wish I had never seen that filthy sword at all.”

“I was never your father nor of your blood, but I wote well ye are of an higher blood than I wend ye were.”

″‘Plenty of people have told me you are not my father,’ said the Wart, ‘but it does not matter a bit.‘”

“Power is of the individual mind, but the mind’s power is not enough. Power of the body decides everything in the end, and only Might is Right.”

“But inside himself he was proud of the Wart for staying out after a hawk, and prouder still to see that he had got it.”

“Why can’t you harness Might so that it works for Right?… The Might is there, in the bad half of people, and you can’t neglect it.”

“Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.”

″‘Tell you!’ he exclaimed. ‘And what is going to happen when there is nobody to tell you? Are you never going to think for yourself?‘”

“Only fools want to be great.”

“Arthur was happy. Like the man in Eden before the fall, he was enjoying his innocence and fortune.”

“The fate of this man or that man was less than a drop, although it was a sparkling one, in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea.”

“You think education is something to be done when all else fails?”

“All the world loves a lover.”

“We have had a good time while we were young, but it is in the nature of Time to fly.”

″‘The best thing for being sad,’ replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, ‘is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails.‘”

″...but it seems, in tragedy, that innocence is not enough.”

“There is one fairly good reason for fighting—and that is, if the other man starts it. You see, wars are a wickedness, perhaps the greatest wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they must not be allowed.”

“I ought to have thought of the people who had no armour.”

“Whoso pulleth Out This Sword of This Stone and Anvil, is Rightwise King Born of All England.”

“There is a thing about Time and Space which the philosopher Einstein is going to find out. Some people call it Destiny.”