The Once and Future King Quotes

“I would do anything for King Arthur.”

“EVERYTHING NOT FORBIDDEN IS COMPULSORY”

“"Oh, my own random, wicked little lamb!"”

“If people reach perfection they vanish, you know.”

“Don't ever let anybody teach you to think, Lance: it is the curse of the world.”

“Wikipedia: The Once and Future King”

“"I think it's a scandal," said Sir Grummore. "God knows what the dear old country is comin' to. Due to these lollards and communists, no doubt."”

“"There are no boundaries among the geese. How can you have boundaries if you fly? Those ants of yours — and the humans too — would have to stop fighting in the end, if they took to the air."”

“"You must come and stay with me," said the King. "That is in the stones also. Show you the holy dish some day, and all that. Teach you arithmetic. Nice weather. Don't have daughters unboiled every day. I think dinner will be ready."”

“The Wart was not a proper son. He did not understand this, but it made him feel unhappy, because Kay seemed to regard it as making him inferior in some way. Also it was different not having a father and mother, and Kay had taught him that being different was wrong.”

“Merlyn stopped talking and looked at the Wart in an anxious way. "Have I told you this before?"
"No, we only met about half an hour ago."
"So little time to pass?" and a big tear ran down to the end of his nose. He wiped it off with his pyjamas and added anxiously, "Am I going to tell it you again?"”

“Why can't you harness Might so that it works for Right? I know it sounds nonsense, but, I mean, you can't just say there is no such thing. The Might is there, in the bad half of people, and you can't neglect it. You can't cut it out but you might be able to direct it, if you see what I mean, so that it was useful instead of bad.”

“Think for how many centuries that unconquerable tower has withstood. It has changed hands by secession often, by siege once, by treachery twice, but never by assault. On this tower the look-out hoved. From here he kept the guard over the blue woods towards Wales. His clean old bones lie beneath the floor of the chapel now, so you must keep it for him.”

“The Wart started talking before he was half-way over the drawbridge. "Look who I have brought," he said. "Look! I have been on a Quest! I was shot at with three arrows. They had black and yellow stripes. The owl is called Archimedes. I saw King Pellinore. This is my tutor, Merlyn. I went on a Quest for him. He was after the Questing Beast. I mean King Pellinore. It was terrible in the forest. Merlyn made the plates wash up."”

“"What is it that you want me to do?"
"Turn me and Kay into snakes or something."
Merlyn took off his spectacles, dashed them on the floor and jumped on them with both feet. "Castor and Pollux blow me to Bermuda!" he exclaimed, and immediately vanished with a frightful roar.
When Merlyn reappeared, he had lost his hat and his hair and beard were tangled up, as if by a hurricane.
"Why did you do that?" asked the Wart.
"I did not do it on purpose."”

“Now ordinary people are born forwards in Time, if you understand what I mean, and nearly everything in the world goes forward too. This makes it quite easy for the ordinary people to live… But I unfortunately was born at the wrong end of time, and I have to live backwards from in front, while surrounded by a lot of people living forwards from behind. Some people call it having second sight.”

“"Do you mean to tell me," exclaimed Sir Grummore indignantly, "that there ain't no King of Gramarye?"
"Not a scrap of one," cried King Pellinore, feeling important. "And there have been signs and wonders of no mean might."
"What sort of signs and wonders?" asked Sir Ector.
"Well, there has appeared a sort of sword in a stone, what, in a sort of a church…"
"I don't know what the Church is coming to," said Sir Grummore.”

“"Look at what a lot of things there are to learn - pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a milliard lifetimes in biology and medicine and theo-criticism and geology and history and economics - why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn how to beat your opponent at fencing. After that you can start again on mathematics until it is time to learn to plough."”

“"How does one get hold of a sword?" the Wart continued. He turned his mount and cantered off along the street. There was a quiet churchyard at the end of it, with a kind of square in front of the church door. In the middle of the square there was a heavy stone with an anvil on it, and a fine new sword was stuck through the anvil.
"Well," said the Wart, "I suppose it is some sort of war memorial, but it will have to do."
He strode up the gravel path, and took hold of the sword. "Come, sword," he said. "I must cry your mercy and take you for a better cause."”

“But it was too late for another effort then. For that time it was his destiny to die, or, as some say, to be carried off to Avilion, where he could wait for better days. For that time it was Lancelot's fate and Guenever's to take the tonsure and the veil, while Mordred must be slain. The fate of this man or that man was less than a drop, although it was a sparkling one, in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea.
The cannons of his adversary were thundering in the tattered morning when the Majesty of England drew himself up to meet the future with a peaceful heart.”