“Humans, who have been given the task to lovingly steer the world, instead plunder her, with no consideration other than their immediate needs. And they give little thought to their own children, who will inherit their lack of love.”
“My life looks as if it had been wasted for want of chances! When I see what you know, what you have read, and seen, and thought, I feel what a nothing I am!”
“She taught me this above all else: things which don’t shift and grow are dead things. They are things the witchery people want. Witchery works to scare people, to make them fear growth.”
″ ‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Brown.‘We really shall have to give him a bath as soon as we get indoors. It’s getting everywhere.’ Paddington looked thoughtful. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t like baths; he really didn’t mind being covered with jam and cream. It seemed a pity to wash it all off quite so soon.
“The birdlike gestures are worn away to a mere picking and plucking her way between the tire rims and the sunflowers, between Coke bottles and milkweed, among all the waste and beauty of the world—which is what she herself was. All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us.”
“I told Ma once the Howards had a room just for company, a room just for books, and a room just for plants, and she said that was three rooms too many. First time I ever saw any envy in my ma.”
“I stood in a wide corridor of mud, a wasted, shattered landscape, between two vast, unending rolls of barbed wire. [...] This was what the soldiers called “no-man’s-land.”
″‘You’ve got a real talent for magic, dearie,’ she said, beaming at Gwendolen, ‘and I wouldn’t be doing my duty by you if I let it go to waste. We must see about a teacher for you right away.‘”
“Don’t be angry with me, Pagan. Don’t let your temper cripple your intelligence. To squander your gifts in such a way... do you think, having found you, I would let you stray down the wrong path again?”
″ ‘Ah!’ says he, falling again to smiling, ‘I got my wastefulness from the same man I got the buttons from; and that was my poor father, Duncan Stewart, grace be to him! He was the prettiest man of his kindred; and the best swordsman in the Hielands, David, and that is the same as to say, in all the world, I should ken, for it was him that taught me. He was in the Black Watch, when first it was mustered; and, like other gentlemen privates, had a gillie at his back to carry his firelock for him on the march. Well, the King, it appears, was wishful to see Hieland swordsmanship; and my father and three more were chosen out and sent to London town, to let him see it at the best.’ ”
″ ‘Child!’ said the cuckoo, suddenly changing his tone, ‘you are very foolish. Is a kind thought or action ever wasted? Can your eyes see what such good seeds grow into? They have wings, Griselda- kindness have wings and roots, remember that- wings never droop and roots never die. What do you think I came and sat outside your window for?’ ”
“Poor Angelina got such a fright she did not waste a moment, but hopped away as hast as her legs could carry her. On and on she went, breathless with fear, not daring to look behind. She reached the foot of the gum-tree and thumped wildly with her tail.”