L. Frank Baum

More from L. Frank Baum

• I believe that dreams — day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing — are likely to lead to the betterment of the world.

  Introduction to The Lost Princess of Oz (1917)

  • Inspiration

• I have learned to regard fame as a will-o-the-wisp which, when caught, is not worth the possession; but to please a child is a sweet and lovely thing that warms one’s heart and brings its own reward.

  Personal inscription on a copy of Mother Goose in Prose (1897) which he gave to his sister, Mary Louise Baum Brewster, as quoted in The Making of the Wizard of Oz (1998) by Aljean Harmetz, p. 317

  • Children
  • Fame

• Now we can cross the Shifting Sands.

  Last words, to his wife Maud (6 May 1919), as quoted in Uncovering Lives: The Uneasy Alliance of Biography and Psychology (1994) by Alan C. Elms, p. 154

  • Life & Death

All 14 quotes from L. Frank Baum

Popular quotes

• No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.

  John Donne1572–1631No Man Is an Island (1624), Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624), Meditation 17In context

• I came, I saw, I conquered.

  Julius Caesar100–44 BCInscription on the triumphal wagon reported in The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, as translated by Robert Graves (1957).

  • Success

• The unexamined life is not worth living.

  Socrates470–399 BCThe Apology of Socrates (399 BC)

  • Philosophy