“The dreadful beast must be exterminated, the country-side must be freed from this pest, this terror, this destroying scourge. The fact that not even a hen roost was the worse for the dragon's arrival wasn't allowed to have anything to do with it. He was a dragon, and he couldn't deny it, and if he didn't choose to behave as such that was his own lookout.”
Dream Days (1898), The Reluctant Dragon
Context: The dreadful beast must be exterminated, the country-side must be freed from this pest, this terror, this destroying scourge. The fact that not even a hen roost was the worse for the dragon's arrival wasn't allowed to have anything to do with it. He was a dragon, and he couldn't deny it, and if he didn't choose to behave as such that was his own lookout. But in spite of much valiant talk no hero was found willing to take sword and spear and free the suffering village and win deathless fame; and each night's heated discussion always ended in nothing. Meanwhile the dragon, a happy Bohemian, lolled on the turf, enjoyed the sunsets, told antediluvian anecdotes to the Boy, and polished his old verses while meditating on fresh ones.
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Kenneth Grahame 83
British novelist 1859–1932Related quotes
“On the Underside of the Stone”, p. 177
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)
“To have dragons one must have change; that is the first principle of dragon lore.”
Source: The Night Country

“People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.”
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 186.
He is certainly a brother to wolves, and to pandas too, but he is father to dragons, not brother: they, like many gods and devils, are inventions of his.
“On the Underside of the Stone”, p. 177
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

“He's quoting Dungeons and Dragons. Ignore him.”
Clary about Simon, pg. 141
The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

“He was not a modest man. Contemplating suicide, he summoned a dragon.'
Gothos' Folly”
Source: The Crippled God