toys Quotes

The North Pole. It was a huge city standing alone at the top of the world, filled with factories where every Christmas toy was made.

The first thing in the world they ever heard were the words, “Tin soldiers!” uttered by a little boy, who clapped his hands with delight when the lid of the box, in which they lay, was taken off.

The soldiers were all exactly alike, excepting one, who had only one leg; he had been left to the last, and then there was not enough of the melted tin to finish him, so they made him to stand firmly on one leg, and this caused him to be very remarkable.

All this was very pretty, but the prettiest of all was a tiny little lady, who stood at the open door of the castle; she, also, was made of paper, and she wore a dress of clear muslin, with a narrow blue ribbon over her shoulders just like a scarf.

When evening came, the other tin soldiers were all placed in the box, and the people of the house went to bed. Then the playthings began to have their own games together, to pay visits, to have sham fights, and to give balls.

They were all anxious to see this wonderful soldier who had travelled about inside a fish; but he was not at all proud.

They placed him on the table, and—how many curious things do happen in the world!—there he was in the very same room from the window of which he had fallen, there were the same children, the same playthings, standing on the table, and the pretty castle with the elegant little dancer at the door . . .

It touched the tin soldier so much to see her that he almost wept tin tears, but he kept them back.

Presently one of the little boys took up the tin soldier, and threw him into the stove. . . . The flames lighted up the tin soldier, as he stood, the heat was very terrible, but whether it proceeded from the real fire or from the fire of love he could not tell.

Suddenly the door of the room flew open and the draught of air caught up the little dancer, she fluttered like a sylph right into the stove by the side of the tin soldier, and was instantly in flames and was gone. . . . [T]he next morning, when the maid servant took the ashes out of the stove, she found him in the shape of a little tin heart.

“He rode into Whoville. He brought back their toys. He brought back their floof to the Who girls and boys.”

“For, tomorrow, I know all the Who girls and boys Will wake bright and early. They’ll rush for their toys!”

″‘I am the nursery magic Fairy,’ she said. ‘I take care of all the playthings that the children have loved. When they are old and worn out and the children don’t need them any more, then I come and take them away with me and turn them into Real.‘”

“He was naturally shy, and being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him. The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one else; they were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real […] Between them all the poor little Rabbit was made to feel himself very insignificant and commonplace, and the only person who was kind to him at all was the Skin Horse.”

″‘Why don’t you get up and play with us?’ one of them asked. ‘I don’t feel like it,’ said the Rabbit, for he didn’t want to explain that he had no clockwork. ‘Ho!’ said the furry rabbit. ‘It’s as easy as anything,’ And he gave a big hop sideways and stood on his hind legs. ‘I don’t believe you can!’ he said. ‘I can!’ said the little Rabbit. ‘I can jump higher than anything!’ He meant when the Boy threw him, but of course he didn’t want to say so.”

“For at least two hours the Boy loved him, and then Aunts and Uncles came to dinner, and there was a great rustling of tissue paper and unwrapping of parcels, and in the excitement of looking at all the new presents the Velveteen Rabbit was forgotten.”

“They find pearls on their coasts, and diamonds and carbuncles on their rocks; they do not look after them, but, if they find them by chance, they polish them, and with them they adorn their children, who are delighted with them, and glory in them during their childhood; but when they grow to years, and see that none but children use such baubles, they of their own accord, without being bid by their parents, lay them aside, and would be as much ashamed to use them afterwards as children among us, when they come to years, are of their puppets and other toys.”

“Nevertheless he persisted in his attitude. He brought home lead soldiers, he brought toy trains, he brought large pleasant animals made of cotton, and, to perfect the illusion which he was creating – for himself at least – he passionately demanded of the clerk in the toy-store whether “the paint would come off the pink duck if the baby put it in his mouth.”

“Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good.”

“Hell waits in a doctor’s office, tapping his shoe against a loose strip of carpet, holding a magazine in front of his face, trying to look professional, whilst eyeing the children’s toys.”

“The Indian was made of plastic again. Omri knelt there, appalled- too appalled to move. He had killed his Indian, or done something awful to him. At the same time he had killed his dream- all the wonderful, exciting, secret games that had filled his imagination all day.”

“I didn’t know I’d lost a button...tonight I’ll go and see if I can find it.”

“Corduroy is a bear who once lived in the toy departments of a big store. Day after day he waited with all the other animals and dolls for somebody to come along and take him home.”

“Look! There’s the very bear I’ve always wanted.”

“Besides, he doesn’t look new. He’s lost the button to one of his shoulder straps.”

″ You’re going to be my very own bear. Last night I counted what I’ve saved in my piggy bank and my mother said I could bring you home.”

“One Christmas, he got a ‘Zybox’ Teddy-Bot. But by Easter, he was bored with it... and then it got broken.”

“At breakfast Anthony found a Corvette Sting Ray car kit in his breakfast cereal box and Nick found a Junior Undercover Agent code ring in his breakfast cereal box but in my breakfast cereal box all I found was breakfast cereal.”

“As always on such trips Lisa carried along her toy bear, Corduroy.”

“The night before her birthday, Hannah went to bed tingling with excitement – she had asked her father for a gorilla! In the middle of the night, Hannah woke up and saw a very small parcel at the foot of the bed. It was a gorilla but it was just a toy.”

“The monster ate the dinner. Then it watched the television. Then it read one of Bernard’s comics. And broke one of his toys.”

“What the real garden had failed to do, the toy garden did. It made me aware of nature—not, indeed, as a storehouse of forms and colors but as something cool, dewy, fresh, exuberant.”

“This place is a toyshop, and you are toy mice. People are going to come and buy you for children, because it’s almost a time called Christmas.”

“Every afternoon Alexander would go for a walk in the city streets near his block of flats. He couldn’t take Felix because he was too small. Felix would sit up at the window, waiting for Alexander to return.”

“This was such a brave little horse, so gay and splendid on his four green wheels, so proud and dashing with his red saddle and blue stripes!”

“But the cheap toys were very pretty, and the children did not want Uncle Peder’s anymore.”

“What do you think she wants with a scratched, broken, cheap toy like you? Do you expect to come and live in her playhouse with us? Look round you and think again!”

Looking Forward When I am grown to man’s estate I shall be very proud and great, And tell the other girls and boys Not to meddle with my toys.

“The Prince Giglio, by reason of his tender age at his royal father’s death, did not feel the loss of his own crown and empire. As long as he had plenty of toys and sweetmeats, a holiday five times a week and a horse and gun to go out shooting when he grew a little older, and, above all, the company of his darling cousin, the King’s only child, poor Giglio was perfectly contented.”

“The wooden soldiers stood exactly as he had seen them when Jane interrupted. They had not moved a tenth of an inch. They were as dead as ninepins. They had frozen again. Max sighed, enraged. ”

″ ‘Oh, Murder! What was that, Papa!’ ‘My child, it was a Motor-Car, A Most Ingenious Toy! Designed to Captivate and Charm Much rather than to rouse Alarm In any English Boy.’ ”

“The moral is that little Boys Should not be given dangerous Toys.”