Roald Dahl famous quotes

If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.
-- Roald Dahl

#Life #Happiness #Beauty

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.
-- Roald Dahl

#Inspirational #Life #Believe

I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. He taught me that if you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it at full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be
-- Roald Dahl

#Life #Inspiring #Passion

Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.
-- Roald Dahl

#Love #Inspirational #Life

I was glad my father was an eye-smiler. It meant he never gave me a fake smile because it's impossible to make your eyes twinkle if you aren't feeling twinkly yourself. A mouth-smile is different. You can fake a mouth-smile any time you want, simply by moving your lips. I've also learned that a real mouth-smile always has an eye-smile to go with it. So watch out, I say, when someone smiles at you but his eyes stay the same. It's sure to be a phony.
-- Roald Dahl

#Children #Father #Real

It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you.
-- Roald Dahl

#Love #Long #Looks

Whipped cream isn't whipped cream at all if it hasnt been whipped with whips, just like poached eggs isn't poached eggs unless it's been stolen in the dead of the night.
-- Roald Dahl

#Night #Eggs #Whipped Cream

Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you.
-- Roald Dahl

#Eye #Watches #World

When you grow up and have children of your own, do please remember something important: A stodgy parent is not fun at all! What a child wants - and DESERVES - is a parent who is SPARKY!
-- Roald Dahl

#Growing Up #Fun #Children

A life is made up of a great number of small incidents, and a small number of great ones.
-- Roald Dahl

#Numbers #Life Is #Incidents

A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.
-- Roald Dahl

#Wisdom #Teacher #Learning

It's impossible to make your eyes twinkle if you aren't feeling twinkly yourself
-- Roald Dahl

#Eye #Feelings #Impossible

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.
-- Roald Dahl

#Beauty #Uplifting #Teacher

Somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world.
-- Roald Dahl

#World #Changing The World

Grown ups are complicated creatures, full of quirks and secrets.
-- Roald Dahl

#Childhood #Secret #Complicated

Mr. Twit was a twit. He was born a twit. And, now at the age of sixty, he was a bigger twit than ever.
-- Roald Dahl

#Age #Bigger #Twits

The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world all to themselves.
-- Roald Dahl

#Children #Sleep #Dark

I've always said to myself that if a little pocket calculator can do it why shouldn't I?
-- Roald Dahl

#Pockets #Littles #Said

The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.
-- Roald Dahl

#Book #Reading #People

All the reading she had done had given her a view of life that they had never seen.
-- Roald Dahl

#Reading #Views #Done

Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.
-- Roald Dahl

#Philosophical #Important #You Choose

Do you know what breakfast cereal is made of? It's made of all those little curly wooden shavings you find in pencil sharpeners!
-- Roald Dahl

#Food #Cereal #Shaving

The more risks you allow your children to make, the better they learn to look after themselves.
-- Roald Dahl

#Children #Risk #Looks

I was already beginning to realize that the only way to conduct oneself in a situation where bombs rained down and bullets whizzed past, was to accept the dangers and all the consequences as calmly as possible. Fretting and sweating about it all was not going to help.
-- Roald Dahl

#Past #Bombs #Down And

There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there, you'll be free if you truly wish to be.
-- Roald Dahl

#Imagination #Wish #Serious

I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours, a fixed salary, and very little original thinking to do.
-- Roald Dahl

#Simple #Thinking #Salary

If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it.
-- Roald Dahl

#Years #Ugly #Faces

A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom.
-- Roald Dahl

#Freedom #Stupid #Fool

Nowadays you can go anywhere in the world in a few hours, and nothing is fabulous any more.
-- Roald Dahl

#World #Fabulous #Hours

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly.
-- Roald Dahl

#Ugly #Good Thoughts #Persons

Writing is mainly perspiration, not inspiration.
-- Roald Dahl

#Inspiration #Writing #Perspiration

I think probably kindness is my number one attribute in a human being. I'll put it before any of the things like courage or bravery or generosity or anything else.
-- Roald Dahl

#Kindness #Thinking #Numbers

I'm wondering what to read next.
-- Roald Dahl

#Reading #Next #Wonder

Some people when they have taken too much and have been driven beyond the point of endurance, simply crumble and give up. There are others, though they are not many, who will for some reason always be unconquerable. You meet them in time of war and also in time of peace. They have an indomitable spirit and nothing, neither pain nor torture nor threat of death, will cause them to give up.
-- Roald Dahl

#Giving Up #Pain #War

Don't gobblefunk around with words.
-- Roald Dahl

#Funny

It is most unlikely. But--here comes the big "but"--not impossible.
-- Roald Dahl

#Life #Magic #Impossible

Then suddenly, he was struck by a powerful but simple little truth, and it was this: that English grammar is governed by rules that are almost mathematical in their strictness!
-- Roald Dahl

#Powerful #Simple #Littles

There is something about very cold weather that gives one an enormous appetite. Most of us find ourselves beginning to crave rich steaming stews and hot apple pies and all kinds of delicious warming dishes; and because we are all a great deal luckier than we realize, we usually get what we want—or near enough.
-- Roald Dahl

#Weather #Apples #Pie

The matter with human beans," the BFG went on, "is that they is absolutely refusing to believe in anything unless they is actually seeing it right in front of their own schnozzles.
-- Roald Dahl

#Believe #Matter #Beans

And don’t worry about the bits you can’t understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music.
-- Roald Dahl

#Worry

Hooray!" said the Chief of the Army. "Let's blow everyone up! Bang-bang! Bang-bang!
-- Roald Dahl

#Army #Blow #Bangs

I am the maker of music, the dreamer of dreams!
-- Roald Dahl

#Dream #Inspiration #Dreamer

Poor Earthworm,' the Ladybird said, whispering in James's ear. 'He loves to make everything into a disaster. He hates to be happy. He is only happy when he is gloomy.
-- Roald Dahl

#Hate #Ears #Whispering

My dear young fellow,' the Old-Green-Grasshopper said gently, 'there are a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven't started wondering about yet.
-- Roald Dahl

#World #Green #Wonder

So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.
-- Roald Dahl

#Strong #Book #Sea

But there was one other thing that the grown-ups also knew, and it was this: that however small the chance might be of striking lucky, the chance is there. The chance had to be there.
-- Roald Dahl

#Life #Might #Lucky

Never mind about 1066 William the Conqueror, 1087 William the Second. Such things are not going to affect one?s life...but 1932 the Mars Bar and 1936 Maltesers and 1937 the Kit Kat - these dates are milestones in history and should be seared into the memory of every child in the country.
-- Roald Dahl

#Country #Memories #Children

The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives.
-- Roald Dahl

#Book #People #World

A little magic can take you a long way.
-- Roald Dahl

#Long #Magic #Littles

So, please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookcase on the wall.
-- Roald Dahl

#Wall #Book #Humor

I've heard tell that what you imagine sometimes comes true. -Grandpa Joe
-- Roald Dahl

#Grandpa #Sometimes #Imagine

When I walked to school in the mornings I would start out alone but would pick up four other boys along the way. We would set out together after school across the village green.
-- Roald Dahl

#Morning #School #Boys

We have so much time and so little to do. Strike that, reverse it.
-- Roald Dahl

#Inspirational #Funny #Sarcastic

Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.
-- Roald Dahl

#Writing #Two #People

You should never, never doubt something that no one is sure of.
-- Roald Dahl

#Doubt #Should

It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.
-- Roald Dahl

#Mom #Mother #Children

If you are good life is good.
-- Roald Dahl

#Good Life #Life Is Good #Life Is

A whizzpopper!" cried the BFG, beaming at her. "Us giants is making whizzpoppers all the time! Whizzpopping is a sign of happiness. It is music in our ears! You surely is not telling me that a little whizzpopping if forbidden among human beans?
-- Roald Dahl

#Ears #Littles #Giants

Of course they're real people. They're Oompa-Loompas...Imported direct from Loompaland...And oh what a terrible country it is! Nothing but thick jungles infested by the most dangerous beasts in the world - hornswogglers and snozzwangers and those terrible wicked whangdoodles. A whangdoodle would eat ten Oompa-Loompas for breakfast and come galloping back for a second helping.
-- Roald Dahl

#Country #Real #People

The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith hope and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul and that I am sure is why he does it.
-- Roald Dahl

#Giving #Soul #Doe

The walls were wet and sticky, and peach juice was dripping from the ceiling. James opened his mouth and caught some of it on his tongue. It tasted delicious.
-- Roald Dahl

#Wall #Juice #Mouths

Words," he said, "is oh such a twitch-tickling problem to me all my life.
-- Roald Dahl

#Tickling #Problem #Said

You seemed so far away," Miss Honey whispered, awestruck. "Oh, I was. I was flying past the stars on silver wings," Matilda said. "It was wonderful.
-- Roald Dahl

#Stars #Past #Wings

Meanings is not important, said the BFG. I cannot be right all the time. Quite often I is left instead of right.
-- Roald Dahl

#Important #Said

I don't care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.
-- Roald Dahl

#Hate #Book #Reading

The greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.
-- Roald Dahl

#Inspiring #Book #Secret

No book ever ends, when it's full of your friends.
-- Roald Dahl

#Book #Ends

Matilda said, "Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it's unbelievable...
-- Roald Dahl

#Crazy #Half #Want

I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn't be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.
-- Roald Dahl

#Book #Teaching #Reading

Life is more fun if you play games.
-- Roald Dahl

#Fun #Games #Play

Homesickness is a bit like seasickness. You don't know how awful it is unti you get it, and when you do, it hits you right in the top of the stomach and you want to die.
-- Roald Dahl

#Want #Awful #Stomach