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gail
Unregistered User
(10/26/00 7:24:39 am)
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fairytale quotes
Our local library is having problems with parents who refuse to let their children read fairy tales -- mainly because of the magic aspect in the tlaes. The librarian plans on putting up a display with pithy quotes about the value of fairy tales to help counter some of this. While I do have some favourites for her, I thought I should ask here for your favourites as well. Thanks in advance, Gail
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Kerrie
Registered User
(10/26/00 8:21:07 am)
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Tolkien and Terri
You may want to try and find Tolkien's "On Fairy-Stories"- I've heard it's a good essay. (Can be found in TREE AND LEAF; POEMS AND STORIES; and THE MONSTERS AND THE CRITICS)
For articles, poems, etc, I highly recommend going to Terri's site, The Endicott Studio, and reading what's there.
www.endicott-studio.com/
I'll try to think of more
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Heidi
Anne Heiner
ezOP
(10/26/00 9:55:23 am)
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Quotes!
There is always the oft used quote from Einstein which of course I do not have at hand right now. I can't even remember it well enough at the moment to paraphrase it. I will search for it in a little bit.
Also, there are several quotes at the beginning of Iona and Peter Opie's "Classic Fairy Tales." Two of them are:
"Never, in all my early childhood, did anyone address to me the affecting preamble: 'Once upon a time!' ... I can but think that my parents were in error thus to exclude the imaginary from my outlook upon facts. They desired to make me truthful; the tendency was to make me positive and sceptical. Had they wrapped me in the soft folds of supernatural fancy, my mind might have been longer content to follow their traditions in an unquestioning spirit."
---Edmund Gosse, Father and Son, 1907
"If you happen to read fairy tales, you will observe that one idea runs from one end of them to the other--the idea that peace and happiness can only exist on some condition. This idea, which is the core of ethics, is the core of the nursery-tales."
---G. K. Chesterton, All Things Considered, 1908
I know I have more, but there is a start.
Heidi
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Heidi
Anne Heiner
ezOP
(10/26/00 11:31:07 am)
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Einstein to consider and other things
When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
And also from: www.uen.org/themepark/htm.../folk.html
When Albert Einstein was asked how to develop intelligence in young people, he answered: "Read fairy tales. Then read more fairy tales."
Einstein also supposedly credited his genius to his mother's reading of folk and fairy tales to him as a child, although I don't have a direct quote.
I am sure there have to be some great ones from Jane Yolen, C. S. Lewis, Madeleine L'Engle, and others, too. I just don't have them at the moment.
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Terri
Registered User
(10/27/00 1:27:07 am)
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Re: fairytale quotes
Jane Yolen's excellent nonfiction book on fairy tales and children, "Touch Magic," is filled with quotable lines, and is also a great book for any library to have that is facing this kind of nonsense.
I also recall that Kay V.'s "Snow White" web site (Heidi has a link; so does the Endicott Studio) has some good pages full of quotes.
But the Yolen book, which has recently been brought back into print, is a must. I can't recommend it highly enough.
Edited by: Terri at: 10/27/00
1:28:03 am
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Gail
de Vos
Registered User
(10/27/00 5:53:08 am)
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Re: fairytale quotes
Thanks to everyone so far. Touch Magic is one of the text books in my storytelling course at the university and I endorse your recommendation Terri. I do have a wide range of material available, I guess what I was asking for was the "one" definitive quote that any of you may have posted over your computer so to speak. I wanted the library display to focus on selected quotes that were not just from one "slightly-prejudiced" storyteller. GAil
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Terri
Registered User
(10/28/00 1:15:19 am)
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Re: fairytale quotes
Here are two favorites:
"Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told to me in my childhood than in any truth that is taught in life."
-- Johann C. Friedrich von Schiller
"In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected."
-- Charles Dickens
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Jenna
Unregistered User
(10/28/00 5:14:09 am)
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fairy tale quotes
Here are two quotes that I particularly like. And the first is by an author who saw no difficulty combining a love with fairy tale with his strong Christian beliefs.
"At all ages, if [fantasy and myth] is used well by the author and meets the right reader, it has the same power: to generalize while remaining conrete, to present in palpable form not concepts or even experiences but whole classes of experience, and to throw off irrelevancies. Bat at its best it can do more; it can give us experiences we have never had and thus, instead of 'commenting on life,' can add to it."
-- C.S. Lewis, from his essay "Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to Be Said," published in Of Other Worlds, 1966.
"Fairy tales were not my escape from reality as a child; rather, they were my reality -- for mine was a world in which good and evil were not abstract concepts, and like fairy-tale heroines, no magic would save me unless I had the wit and heart and courage to use it widely."
-- Terri Windling, from her essay on the importance of fairy tales to a child growing up in a violent home, "Surviving Childhood," published in The Armless Maiden, 1995.
I'm also a fan of the Chesterton quote above.
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CoryEllen
Registered User
(10/28/00 8:22:56 am)
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Trippin'
This quote isn't *precisely* faery-tale related, but I love it, and I think you might too, Gail (if you haven't heard it already, of course):
"Storytellers make us remember what mankind would have been like,
had not fear and the failing will and the laws of nature tripped up its heels."
-- W.B. Yeats
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Gail
de Vos
Registered User
(10/28/00 12:29:51 pm)
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Re: Trippin'
Thanks, this one is great -- maybe not for the display but for my office wall! Gail
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