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21 " When Eleanor was a little girl, she'd thought her mom looked like a queen, like the star of some fairy tale.Not a princess - princesses are just pretty. Eleanor's mother was beautiful. She was tall and stately, with broad shoulders and an elegant waist. All of her bones seemed more purposeful than other people's. Like they weren't just there to hold her up, they were there to make a point. "
― Rainbow Rowell
22 " She said being human is being a young child on Christmas Day who receives an absolutely magnificent castle. And there is a perfect photograph of this castle on the box and you want more than anything to play with the castle and the knights and the princesses because it looks like such a perfectly human world, but the only problem is that the castle isn’t built. It’s in tiny intricate pieces, and although there’s a book of instructions you don’t understand it. And nor can your parents or Aunt Sylvie. So you are just left, crying at the ideal castle on the box which no one would ever be able to build "
23 " Beautiful princesses and beautiful, strong queens are brainwashed into thinking ho’s and B****’s are virtuous titles. "
― , Words That Changed the World
24 " There is nothing to be found in human eyes, and that is their terrifying and dolorous enigma, their abominable and delusive charm. There is nothing but that which we put there ourselves. That is why honest gazes are only to be found in portraits.The faded and weary eyes of martyrs, expressions tortured by ecstasy, imploring and suffering eyes, some resigned, others desperate... the gazes of saints, mendicants and princesses in exile, with pardoning smiles... the gazes of the possessed, the chosen and the hysterical... and sometimes of little girls, the eyes of Ophelia and Canidia, the eyes of virgins and witches... as you live in the museums, what eternal life, dolorous and intense, shines out of you! Like precious stones enshrined between the painted eyelids of masterpieces, you disturb us across time and across space, receivers of the dream which created you!You have souls, but they are those of the artists who wished you into being, and I am delivered to despair and mortification because I have drunk the draught of poison congealed in the irises of your eyes.The eyes of portraits ought to be plucked out. "
― Jean Lorrain , Monsieur De Phocas
25 " She strolled between shelves, looking at titles, smiling as she met old friends - books she had read three times or five times or a dozen. Just a title, or an author's name, would be enough to summon up happy images. Strange creatures like phoenixes and psammeads, moving under smokey London daylight of a hundred years before, in company with groups of bemused children; starships and new worlds and the limitless vistas of interstellar night, outer space challenged but never conquered; princesses in silver and golden dresses, princes and heroes carrying swords like sharpened lines of light, monsters rising out of weedy tarns, wild creatures that talked and tricked one another... "
― Diane Duane , So You Want to Be a Wizard (Young Wizards #1)
26 " Fairy tales are about trouble, about getting into and out of it, and trouble seems to be a necessary stage on the route to becoming. All the magic and glass mountains and pearls the size of houses and princesses beautiful as the day and talking birds and part-time serpents are distractions from the core of most of the stories, the struggle to survive against adversaries, to find your place in the world, and to come into your own.Fairy tales are almost always the stories of the powerless, of youngest sons, abandoned children, orphans, of humans transformed into birds and beasts or otherwise enchanted away from their own lives and selves. Even princesses are chattels to be disowned by fathers, punished by step-mothers, or claimed by princes, though they often assert themselves in between and are rarely as passive as the cartoon versions. Fairy tales are children's stories not in wh they were made for but in their focus on the early stages of life, when others have power over you and you have power over no one.In them, power is rarely the right tool for survival anyway. Rather the powerless thrive on alliances, often in the form of reciprocated acts of kindness -- from beehives that were not raided, birds that were not killed but set free or fed, old women who were saluted with respect. Kindness sewn among the meek is harvested in crisis...In Hans Christian Andersen's retelling of the old Nordic tale that begins with a stepmother, " The Wild Swans," the banished sister can only disenchant her eleven brothers -- who are swans all day look but turn human at night -- by gathering stinging nettles barehanded from churchyard graves, making them into flax, spinning them and knitting eleven long-sleeved shirts while remaining silent the whole time. If she speaks, they'll remain birds forever. In her silence, she cannot protest the crimes she accused of and nearly burned as a witch.Hauled off to a pyre as she knits the last of the shirts, she is rescued by the swans, who fly in at the last moment. As they swoop down, she throws the nettle shirts over them so that they turn into men again, all but the youngest brother, whose shirt is missing a sleeve so that he's left with one arm and one wing, eternally a swan-man. Why shirts made of graveyard nettles by bleeding fingers and silence should disenchant men turned into birds by their step-mother is a question the story doesn't need to answer. It just needs to give us compelling images of exile, loneliness, affection, and metamorphosis -- and of a heroine who nearly dies of being unable to tell her own story. "
27 " Galen!" The crown princess flung herself into her husband's arms with a glad cry. The other princesses shrieked and threw themselves at their brother-in-law only a moment later. "
28 " I want to introduce the world to my princess.’ In a state of disbelief, Izzy took his hand and they walked back towards the stage. Happiness bubbled up inside her as it slowly dawned on her that this was real. She lifted her face to look at him. ‘I think I’m going to look cute in a tiara. I’ve never worn anything sparkly on my head before.’ He laughed and tightened his grip on her hand. ‘First thing tomorrow I’m going to buy you one.’ ‘Slow down.’ She winced and stooped to fiddle with her feet. ‘My shoes are hurting.’ ‘This is not news. Your shoes are always hurting, tesoro.’ ‘Do princesses absolutely have to wear shoes at all times?’ A slow smile spread across his face and he scooped her into his arms and carried her the last few steps onto the stage. ‘Of course not. Didn’t you read Cinderella? "
― Sarah Morgan , Defying the Prince
29 " But as she continued and finished her tale, I could tell that her heart was elsewhere, and when she excused herself to go to bed, she left without saying good night. After that, the princesses in her stories were always beautiful. Always. "
― Kelly Barnhill , Iron Hearted Violet
30 " We fall asleep to fairy tales, and the world rotates and revolves and time passes and we grow up and we understand that they are false. There are not heroes and princesses and villains. It's not that easy. "
― Amy Zhang
31 " EnnuiTea leaves thwart those who court catastrophe,designing futures where nothing will occur:cross the gypsy’s palm and yawning shewill still predict no perils left to conquer.Jeopardy is jejune now: naïve knightfinds ogres out-of-date and dragons unheardof, while blasé princesses indicttilts at terror as downright absurd.The beast in Jamesian grove will never jump,compelling hero’s dull career to crisis;and when insouciant angels play God’s trump,while bored arena crowds for once look eager,hoping toward havoc, neither pleas nor prizesshall coax from doom’s blank door lady or tiger. "
― Sylvia Plath
32 " Rilke wrote in one of my favourite books [Letters to a Young Poet], “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” It takes courage to live as our true selves; especially when doing so can be faced with such unkindness. But I believe the more we show of ourselves, the more we make space for positive change in the world. I feel so grateful I get to be a part of a series that is contributing to that change. "
33 " Women, when they kill themselves, choose far more romantic methods - like slashing their wrists or taking an overdose of sleeping pills.Abandoned princesses and Hollywood actresses have provided numerous examples of this. "
34 " I hate gender stereotypes like girls love princesses and boys like guns. . . my point is that tying particular behaviors and interests to particular gender seems to be the major reason guys who like dance get called names. "
35 " I have had affairs that lasted decades and others that lasted for hours. I have loved princesses and peasants. And I suppose they loved me, each in their way. "
― Erin Morgenstern , The Night Circus
36 " How should we be able to forget those myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. "
― Rainer Maria Rilke
37 " If we only arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. "
― Rainer Maria Rilke , Letters to a Young Poet
38 " City of Vassillian a party of five sage princes with four horses. The princes, who are of course brave, noble and wise, travel widely in distant lands, fight giant ogres, pursue exotic philosophies, take tea with weird gods and rescue beautiful monsters from ravening princesses before finally announcing that they have achieved enlightenment and that their wanderings are therefore accomplished. The second, and much longer, part of each song would then tell of all their bickerings about which one of them is going to have to walk back. All this lay in the planet’s remote past. "
― Douglas Adams , The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2)
39 " Hold on to me!” Tedros yelled, hacking briars with his training sword.Dazed, Agatha clung to his chest as he withstood thorn lashes with moans of pain. Soon he had the upper hand and pulled Agatha from the Woods towards the spiked gates, which glowed in recognition and pulled apart, cleaving a narrow path for the two Evers. As the gates speared shut behind them,Agatha looked up at limping Tedros, crisscrossed with bloody scratches, blue shirt shredded away.“Had a feeling Sophie was getting in through the Woods,” he panted, hauling her up into slashed arms before she could protest. “So Professor Dovey gave me permission to take some fairies and stakeout the outer gates. Should have known you’d be here trying to catch her yourself.”Agatha gaped at him dumbly.“Stupid idea for a princess to take on witches alone,” Tedros said, dripping sweat on her pink dress.“Where is she?” Agatha croaked. “Is she safe?”“Not a good idea for princesses to worry about witches either,” Tedros said, hands gripping her waist. Her stomach exploded with butterflies.“Put me down,” she sputtered— “More bad ideas from the princess.”“Put me down!”Tedros obeyed and Agatha pulled away.“I’m not a princess!” she snapped, fixing her collar.“If you say so,” the prince said, eyes drifting downward.Agatha followed them to her gashed legs, waterfalls of brilliant blood. She saw blood blurring— Tedros smiled. “One . . . two . . . three . . .”She fainted in his arms.“Definitely a princess,” he said. "
― Soman Chainani , The School for Good and Evil (The School for Good and Evil, #1)
40 " She [Pansy] pushed in next to Poppy so that she could see him around the guard's elbow. She was as tall as Poppy, with shining dark-brown hair and blue eyes. An utterly lovely girl, as all the princesses were, yet Oliver thought Petunia was far more beautiful. "
― Jessica Day George , Princess of the Silver Woods (The Princesses of Westfalin Trilogy, #3)