The Princess and the Goblin
1872
The Princess and the Goblin
1872
Beneath the mountains, something ancient and malevolent waits. Above them, young Princess Irene explores a castle far too small for her restless curiosity. What she finds there a great-great-grandmother spinning in a hidden chamber, goblins nursing their hatred in the dark will reshape everything she thought she knew about her world. When the goblins make their move, it is not knights or generals who answer the threat, but Irene herself and Curdie, a coal-miner's son who sees what no one else dares to believe. MacDonald writes with the fierce gentleness of a man who never underestimated what children could endure or understand. The princess and the goblin is a fairy tale that takes imagination seriously, where danger is real and courage is not the absence of fear but the decision to act anyway. Its influence echoes through every fantasy that followed, from Carroll to Lewis to modern fantasy. This is for anyone who believed, as a child, that the right story could save the world.
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“Seeing is not believing - it is only seeing.””
— George MacDonald
“We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary.'What is that, grandmother?'To understand other people.'Yes, grandmother. I must be fair - for if I'm not fair to other people, I'm not worth being understood myself. I see.””
— George MacDonald
“People must believe what they can, and those who believe more must not be hard upon those who believe less. I doubt if you would have believed it all yourself if you hadn't seen some of it.””
— George MacDonald
“Here I should like to remark, for the sake of princes and princesses in general, that it is a low and contemptible thing to refuse to confess a fault, or even an error. If a true princess has done wrong, she is always uneasy until she has had an opportunity of throwing the wrongness away from her by saying: 'I did it; and I wish I had not; and I am sorry for having done it.””
— George MacDonald
“It is when people do wrong things wilfully that they are the more likely to do them again.””
— George MacDonald
“...it is so silly of people to fancy that old age means crookedness and witheredness and feebleness and sticks and spectacles and rheumatism and forgetfulness! It is so silly! Old age has nothing whatever to do with all that. The right old age means strength and beauty and mirth and courage and clear eyes and strong painless limbs.””
— George MacDonald
“Her face was fair and pretty, with eyes like two bits of night sky, each with a star dissolved in the blue.””
— George MacDonald
“It was foolish indeed - thus to run farther and farther from all who could help her, as if she had been seeking a fit spot for the goblin creature to eat her in at his leisure; but that is the way fear serves us: it always sides with the thing we are afraid of.””
— George MacDonald
“That's all nonsense," said Curdie. "I don't know what you mean." "Then if you don't know what I mean, what right have you to call it nonsense?””
— George MacDonald
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MacDonald, George. The Princess and the Goblin. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-princess-and-the-goblin-ecdc9211-adca-4d43-960b-3894df913181.MacDonald, G. (1872). The Princess and the Goblin. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-princess-and-the-goblin-ecdc9211-adca-4d43-960b-3894df913181MacDonald, George. The Princess and the Goblin. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-princess-and-the-goblin-ecdc9211-adca-4d43-960b-3894df913181.
