The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-5) QUOTES

2 " Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically--to those who hardly think about us in return. "

― T.H. White , The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-5)

4 " You run a grave risk, my boy," said the magician, "of being turned into a piece of bread, and toasted. "

― T.H. White , The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-5)

6 " I think I ought to have some eddication,"said the Wart, "I can't think of anything to do. "

― T.H. White , The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-5)

8 " Merlyn always said that sportsmanship was the curse of the world, and so it is. "

― T.H. White , The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-5)

10 " Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically – to those who hardly think about us in return. "

― T.H. White , The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-5)

12 " 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. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then – to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn – pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a milliard lifetimes in biology and medicine and theo-criticism and geography and history and economics – why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing. After that you can start again on mathematics, until it is time to learn to plough. "

― T.H. White , The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-5)

14 " We are more numerous than they are, therefore we have a right to their mash. They are more numerous than we are, therefore they are wickedly trying to steal our mash. We are a mighty race and have a natural right to subjugate their puny one. They are a mighty race and are unnaturally trying to subjugate our inoffensive one. We must attack them in self-defence. They are attacking us by defending themselves. If we do not attack them today, they will attack us tomorrow. In any case we are not attacking them at all. We are offering them incalculable benefits. "

― T.H. White , The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-5)

16 " Merlin: "Grown-ups have developed an unpleasant habit lately, I notice, of comforting themselves for their degradation by pretending that children are childish. I trust we are free of this?"

Arthur: "Everybody knows that children are more intelligent than their parents."

Merlin: "You and I know it, but the people who are going to read this book do not.
Our readers of that time (...) have exactly three ideas in their magnificent noodles. The first is that the human species is superior to others. The second, that the twentieth century is superior to other centuries. And the third, that human adults of the twentieth century are superior to their young. (...) "

― T.H. White , The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-5)

18 " Saints, as the Old Ones knew very well, were a bad class of people to cross, so the children stood up hastily. ‘Och, now,’ they said. ‘Your Holiness, no offence, we are sure. We were only at wishing to make an exchange of ideas. "

― T.H. White , The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-5)