Andrew Lang

“I don't think the idea of homosexuality is really taboo any more. Our culture is evolving. This is an exciting time to be living.”

“Young men, especially in America, write to me and ask me to recommend “a course of reading.” Distrust a course of reading! People who really care for books read all of them. There is no other course.”

“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts - for support rather than for illumination.”

“It takes all sorts to make a world,” some are soldiers from the cradle, some merchants, some orators; nothing but a love of books was the gift given to me by the fairies.”

“Life's more amusing than we thought.”

“Again, if there are really no fairies, why do people believe in them, all over the world? The ancient Greeks believed, so did the old Egyptians, and the Hindoos, and the Red Indians, and is it likely, if there are no fairies, that so many different peoples would have seen and heard them?”

“An unsophisticated forecaster uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts - for support rather than for illumination.”

“But the three hundred and sixty-five authors who try to write new fairy tales are very tiresome. They always begin with a little boy or girl who goes out and meets the fairies of polyanthuses and gardenias and apple blossoms: 'Flowers and fruits, and other winged things.' These fairies try to be funny, and fail; or they try to preach, and succeed.”

“In literature, as in love, one can only speak for himself.”

“He missed an invaluable opportunity to hold his tongue.”

“Why should I laugh?' asked the old man. 'Madness in youth is true wisdom. Go, young man, follow your dream, and if you do not find the happiness that you seek, at any rate you will have had the happiness of seeking it.”

“You can cover a great deal of country in books.”