Quotes About Dragons

Imperial dragon of China
China's imperial dragon, shown with five claws on each foot.

Grant Faint/Photographer's Choice

Dragons are among the most fierce and monstrous of creatures in literature and legend. They appear in stories and myths from around the world. People of all ages love these literary monsters. Even when writers aren't including real dragons in their stories they reference them for symbolic meaning, usually about people overcoming fantastic odds.

General Dragon Observations

  • "A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb."
    — W. H. Auden
  • "Above us, outlined against the brilliant sky, dragons crowded every available perching space on the Rim. And the sun made a gold of every one of them."
    ― Anne McCaffrey, Nerilka's Story
  • "But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them."
    Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

Dragons in Stories and Literature

  • "Come not between the dragon, and his wrath."
    - William Shakespeare, King Lear
  • "Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."
    ― Neil Gaiman, Coraline
  • "Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragons intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon."
    ― G.K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles
  • "Here be dragons to be slain, here be rich rewards to gain; / If we perish in the seeking, why, how small a thing is death!"
    ― Dorothy L. Sayers, Catholic Tales and Christian Songs

Philosophizing About Dragons

  • "He had only heard of dragons, and although he had never seen one, he was sure they existed."
    ― Dee Marie, Sons of Avalon: Merlin's Prophecy
  • "He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself; and if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you."
    — Friedrich Nietzsche
  • "How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us."
    ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
  • "I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?"
    ― John Lennon

Seeing Dragons

  • "I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighborhood. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fáfnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever the cost of peril."
    ― J.R.R. Tolkien
  • "I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning."
    ― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore
  • "If you have ever seen a dragon in a pinch, you will realize that this was only poetical exaggeration applied to any hobbit, even to Old Took's great-granduncle Bullroarer, who was so huge (for a hobbit) that he could ride a horse. He charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of the Green Fields, and knocked their king Golfibul's head clean off with a wooden club. It sailed a hundred yards through the air and went down a rabbit-hole, and in this way, the battle was won and the game of Golf was invented at the same moment."
    ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
  • "Imagine a land where people are afraid of dragons. It is a reasonable fear: dragons possess a number of qualities that make being afraid of them a very commendable response. Things like their terrible size, their ability to spout fire, or to crack boulders into splinters with their massive talons. In fact, the only terrifying quality that dragons do not possess is that of existence."
    ― David Whiteland, Book of Pages

Don't Laugh at Dragons

  • "Never laugh at live dragons."
    J.R.R. Tolkien
  • "Noble dragons don't have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive."
    ― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
  • "O to be a dragon, a symbol of the power of Heaven - of silkworm size or immense; at times invisible."
    — Marianne Moore, O To Be A Dragon
  • "Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself."
    ― C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
  • "Speak politely to an enraged dragon."
    ― J.R.R. Tolkien

Dragons Never Die

  • "They say dragons never truly die. No matter how many times you kill them."
    ― S.G. Rogers, Jon Hansen and the Dragon Clan of Yden
  • "True Dragons are among the Universe's most perfect beings. This is a useful bit of information. Squirrel it away like a nugget of Fafnir's gold; take it out and burnish it now and then as we proceed."
    ― Shawn MacKenzie
  • "You can't map a sense of humor. Anyway, what is a fantasy map but a space beyond which There Be Dragons? On the Discworld, we know that There Be Dragons Everywhere. They might not all have scales and forked tongues, but they Be Here all right, grinning and jostling and trying to sell you souvenirs."
    ― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic
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Lombardi, Esther. "Quotes About Dragons." ThoughtCo, May. 16, 2021, thoughtco.com/writer-quotes-about-dragons-739550. Lombardi, Esther. (2021, May 16). Quotes About Dragons. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/writer-quotes-about-dragons-739550 Lombardi, Esther. "Quotes About Dragons." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/writer-quotes-about-dragons-739550 (accessed March 28, 2024).