"Here it is about gentlemen of fortune. They lives rough, and they risk swinging, but they eat and drink like fighting cocks, and when a cruise is done, why, it’s hundreds of pounds instead of hundreds of farthings in their pockets."
- Robert Louis Stevenson, "Treasure Island"
Louis Rhead

"In [Captain Hook's] dark nature there was a touch of the feminine, as in all the great pirates."
- J. M. Barrie, "Peter Pan"

Originally, J. M. Barrie toyed with the idea of Captain Hook in the "Peter Pan" play being played in drag by the same actress who played Mrs. Darling (the children's mother).

"Frith [the sun] made all the animals and birds, but when he first made them, they were all the same. The sparrow and the kestrel were friends, and they both ate seeds and flies. And the fox and the rabbit were friends, and they both ate grass. And there was plenty of grass and plenty of flies, because the world was new, and Frith shone down bright and warm all day."
- Richard Adams, "Watership Down"

The genders were "originally three in number; there was man, woman, and the union of the two.... The man was the child of the sun, the woman of the earth, and the man-woman of the moon.... Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great."
- Plato, "The Symposium"

“Thou hast not trod with pilgrim foot the ground
Where sleeps the canine martyr of distrust.
Poor Gelert, famed in song, as brave a hound
As ever guarded homestead, hut, or hall,
Or leapt exulting at the hunter’s call;
As ever grateful man consigned to dust.”
- John Critchley Prince
Gourlay Steell

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."
- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy"

"Mamma had scarcely turn'd her back,
The thumb was in, alack! Alack!
The door flew open, in he ran,
The great, long, red-legg'd scissor-man."
- Heinrich Hoffmann, "Little Suck-a-Thumb"
Heinrich Hoffmann

In Hoffmann's nursery rhymes, children are cruelly punished for their bad habits.

Morgan le Fay "espied [her husband] King Uriens lying in his bed sleeping. Then she called unto her a maiden of her counsel, and said, 'Go fetch me my lord’s sword, for I saw never better time to slay him than now.'"
- Thomas Malory, "Le Morte d'Arthur"
Iren Horrors

"Here at least we shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence.
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."
- John Milton, "Paradise Lost"
Gustave Doré

"On the roof - not sitting, but standing on the roof - swaying with superb balance as it came at full speed round the corner with one wheel in the air - was Jadis the Queen of Queens and the Terror of Charn. Her teeth were bared, her eyes shone like fire, and her long hair streamed out behind her like a comet's tail."
- C. S. Lewis, "The Magician's Nephew"
Pauline Baynes

"In our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else - if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
John Tenniel

"My birthday began with the water birds
And the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses.
And I rose in rainy autumn,
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days."
- Dylan Thomas, "A Poem in October"

"For what, Merlin? For your ambition? For the great prophet and magician of whom men speak with bated breath and give more worship than they would a king or his high priest? And who is it pays this debt to God for carrying out your plans?"
- Mary Stewart, "The Crystal Cave"
​ Aubrey Beardsley
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