Footprints in the snow have been unfailing provokers of sentiment…

Don't, for goodness' sake, keep on saying 'Don't;' I hear so much of it, and it's monotonous, and makes me tired.

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 …

Look here, father, you know we've each of us got our line. You know about sheep, and weather, and things; I know about dragons.

Monkeys, who very sensibly refrain from speech lest they should be set to earn their livings.

As a rule, indeed, grown-up people are fairly correct on matters of fact; it is in the higher gift of imagination that they are so sadly to seek.

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 …