“The most modest and retiring dragon in the world, if he's as big as four cart-horses and covered with blue scales, cannot keep altogether out of the public view.”

—  Kenneth Grahame , book The Reluctant Dragon

Dream Days (1898), The Reluctant Dragon
Context: The most modest and retiring dragon in the world, if he's as big as four cart-horses and covered with blue scales, cannot keep altogether out of the public view. And so in the village tavern of nights the fact that a real live dragon sat brooding in the cave on the Downs was naturally a subject for talk.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The most modest and retiring dragon in the world, if he's as big as four cart-horses and covered with blue scales, cann…" by Kenneth Grahame?
Kenneth Grahame photo
Kenneth Grahame 83
British novelist 1859–1932

Related quotes

Steven Erikson photo

“He was not a modest man. Contemplating suicide, he summoned a dragon.'
Gothos' Folly”

Steven Erikson book The Crippled God

Source: The Crippled God

John Heywood photo

“Set the cart before the horse.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Part II, chapter 7.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“4440. The Cart before the Horse.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“There is always more goodness in the world than there appears to be, because goodness is of its very nature modest and retiring.”

Evelyn Beatrice Hall book The Friends of Voltaire

Source: The Friends of Voltaire (1906), Ch. 7 : Helvétius : The Contradiction, p. 188

“As long as man feels that he is the most important thing in the world, he cannot really appreciate the world around him. He is like a horse with blinders; all he sees is himself, apart from everything else.”

Carlos Castaneda book The Wheel of Time

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from "Journey to Ixtlan" (Chapter 8)

Akira Toriyama photo

“The offer to direct an animated version of Blue Dragon came in February of last year [2006]. Studio Pierrot approached me regarding it. I knew that Sakaguchi had been working on assembling staff to produce a game, although at the time Blue Dragon hadn't yet been formally announced. According to the materials, it was to be a fantasy world like Lord of the Rings, with a detailed world view and story. This may be my final anime, I'm a little worried (about it). There's incredible pressure, but at the same time, there's a sense of accomplishment — that it's worth doing. Blue Dragon will be a masterpiece, not simply because I'm working hard on it, but because the staff is expecting nothing less.”

Akira Toriyama (1955) manga artist and video game character designer

Last anime?

“But while Ricardo, the economist, walked like a god (although he was a modest and retiring person), Malthus was relegated to a lower status.”

Robert L. Heilbroner book The Worldly Philosophers

Source: The Worldly Philosophers (1953), Chapter IV, Parson Malthus and David Ricardo, p. 77

Rudyard Kipling photo

“We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the cart;
But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: “It's clever, but is it Art?””

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

The Conundrum of the Workshops, Stanza 6.
Other works

Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Franklin D. Roosevelt photo

“I know at the same time that you will be sympathetic to the point of view that public psychology, and for that matter, individual psychology, cannot, because of human weakness, be attuned for long periods of time to a constant repetition of the highest note on the scale.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Letter to Ray Stannard Baker (20 March 1935), quoted in My Own Story: From Private and Public Papers (ed. Donald Day; Little, Brown & Co. 1951), p. 239
1930s

Related topics