Roald Dahl Quotes — 'Watch with Glittering Eyes the Whole World Around You' and 30 Magical Words on Kindness, Wonder & the Power of Imagination
Roald Dahl (1916-1990) was a British novelist, short-story writer, and screenwriter whose children's books -- including 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,' 'Matilda,' 'James and the Giant Peach,' 'The BFG,' and 'The Witches' -- have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide. Born in Cardiff, Wales, to Norwegian immigrant parents, he was sent to brutal English boarding schools where the cruelty of headmasters and prefects (and the small consolation of Cadbury chocolate tastings) would later fuel his fiction. During World War II he served as a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force, was severely injured in a crash in the Libyan Desert, and later became a spy for British intelligence in Washington, D.C. His combination of anarchic humor, macabre imagination, and fierce sympathy for children against unjust adults made his books perennial favorites.
Roald Dahl wrote sentences that lodge themselves permanently in the memory of every child who reads them and every adult who reads them aloud. His language is deceptively simple, his moral clarity absolute, and his belief in the power of wonder as fierce as any philosopher's. Among the most treasured Roald Dahl quotes about life is the instruction to "watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you," a passage whose meaning deepens with each reading, reminding us that the greatest magic is not invented but noticed. The glittering eyes quote meaning extends far beyond childhood optimism; it is an urgent call to remain awake to beauty and strangeness in an age that encourages numbness. Equally beloved are Roald Dahl quotes on kindness, particularly his conviction that good thoughts radiate outward and literally transform a person's face. These 30 quotes, drawn from his children's novels, short stories, autobiographical writings, and interviews, reveal a storyteller who trusted children completely, challenged cruelty without flinching, and believed that imagination was the most revolutionary force on earth.
Who Was Roald Dahl?
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Born | September 13, 1916 |
| Died | November 23, 1990 (age 74) |
| Nationality | British (Norwegian parents) |
| Occupation | Children’s Author, Short Story Writer, Screenwriter |
| Known For | Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, The BFG |
Key Achievements and Episodes
A Fighter Pilot Who Became a Children’s Author
During World War II, Dahl served as a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force. In September 1940, his plane ran out of fuel and crashed in the Libyan desert. He suffered a fractured skull, a smashed nose, and was temporarily blinded. After recovering, he returned to combat and shot down enemy aircraft before being invalided out of service due to headaches from his injuries. His wartime experiences became the basis for his adult short stories, while his imagination and love of the grotesque fueled the children’s books that made him one of the most beloved and bestselling authors of the 20th century.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: A Book Within a Book
Published in 1964, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has sold over 20 million copies worldwide. Dahl originally wrote a version in which the Oompa-Loompas were described as African pygmies, which he revised in 1973 after criticism. The novel, with its imaginative world of edible rivers and televised chocolate, has been adapted into two major films. Dahl’s genius lay in his willingness to be genuinely dark and dangerous in his children’s fiction -- adults are often villains, children face real peril, and justice is served through wonderfully inventive punishments.
Who Was Roald Dahl?
Roald Dahl was born on September 13, 1916, in Llandaff, Cardiff, Wales, to Norwegian immigrant parents Harald Dahl and Sofie Magdalene Hesselberg. His father, a prosperous shipbroker, had emigrated from Sarpsborg, Norway, and named his son after the polar explorer Roald Amundsen, a national hero in Norway at the time. Tragedy struck early when Dahl's older sister Astri died of appendicitis in 1920, and his father died of pneumonia just weeks later, leaving Sofie to raise the family alone. These losses imprinted on the young boy a keen awareness of life's fragility that would echo through all his later writing.
Dahl's education at English boarding schools became a defining crucible. At St Peter's School in Weston-super-Mare and later at Repton School in Derbyshire, he experienced the rigid discipline, casual cruelty, and petty tyranny of the British public school system. Prefects administered beatings, headmasters ruled through fear, and the food was often appalling. These experiences, recounted with unflinching honesty in his autobiography Boy (1984), planted the seeds of his lifelong contempt for bullies and his instinctive sympathy for the powerless child pitted against monstrous adults.
Rather than attend university, Dahl joined the Shell Oil Company and was posted to East Africa in 1938. When the Second World War broke out, he enlisted in the Royal Air Force, training as a fighter pilot in Nairobi. In September 1940, flying a Gloster Gladiator biplane over the Libyan desert, he crash-landed when he ran out of fuel and was unable to locate his remote airstrip. He fractured his skull, smashed his nose, and was temporarily blinded. After months of recovery, he returned to active combat, flying Hurricanes in the Battle of Athens and engaging in aerial dogfights over Greece. His war experiences, later recounted in Going Solo (1986), shaped his writing with an unforgettable combination of deadpan humor and visceral danger.
Dahl's literary career began almost by accident. Posted to Washington, D.C., as an assistant air attache in 1942, he was interviewed by the novelist C.S. Forester, who encouraged him to write down his wartime memories. The resulting piece, "Shot Down over Libya," was published in The Saturday Evening Post, and Dahl discovered that he could write. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, he established himself as a master of the adult short story, crafting dark, twist-ending tales of revenge, deception, and macabre humor. Collections such as Someone Like You (1953) and Kiss Kiss (1960) earned him comparison to writers like Saki and O. Henry, and many of these stories were later adapted for the television series Tales of the Unexpected.
The transformation into the world's most beloved children's author began with James and the Giant Peach (1961), a wildly inventive tale of an orphaned boy who escapes his wicked aunts inside an enormous fruit. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory followed in 1964 and became a global sensation, introducing Willy Wonka, the Oompa-Loompas, and a moral universe in which greedy, spoiled children receive poetic punishments while the good-hearted Charlie Bucket inherits the factory. Dahl went on to produce an extraordinary run of children's classics: Fantastic Mr Fox (1970), Danny, the Champion of the World (1975), The BFG (1982), The Witches (1983), and Matilda (1988), among many others. Each book shared a common architecture: a brave, clever child triumphs over cruel or stupid adults through wit, courage, and the transformative magic of imagination.
Dahl's personal life was marked by both great love and devastating loss. He married the American actress Patricia Neal in 1953, and together they had five children. In 1960, their infant son Theo suffered severe brain damage when his pram was struck by a taxi in New York. Dahl responded by co-inventing the Wade-Dahl-Till valve, a cerebral shunt used to treat hydrocephalus. In 1962, their daughter Olivia died of measles encephalitis at the age of seven, a grief from which Dahl never fully recovered and which later drove him to become a passionate advocate for childhood vaccination. His marriage to Neal ended in 1983, and he married Felicity Crosland that same year.
Throughout his life, Dahl championed charitable causes, particularly those relating to children's health and literacy. After his death, the Roald Dahl's Marvellous Children's Charity continued his work supporting seriously ill children, and the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, where he lived and wrote for thirty-six years, became a pilgrimage site for young readers from around the world.
Roald Dahl died on November 23, 1990, at the age of seventy-four, in Oxford, England. He was buried in the churchyard of St Peter and St Paul in Great Missenden, alongside some of his most treasured possessions, including his snooker cues, burgundy wine, chocolates, and pencils. September 13, his birthday, is celebrated annually as Roald Dahl Day, a global festival of storytelling and imagination. His books have been translated into over sixty languages and have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide, securing his place as one of the greatest storytellers of the twentieth century and a writer whose moral vision, fierce humor, and faith in children remain as vital today as the day he set them down.
Roald Dahl Quotes on Wonder, Magic, and Seeing the World
Dahl never tired of insisting that the world is saturated with marvels for anyone willing to look. From the miniature civilization living inside the trees of The Minpins to the dream-blowing giant who visits children at night, his fiction is a sustained argument that wonder is not childish but essential. These eight quotes capture his lifelong enchantment with the unseen.
"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."
The Minpins (1991) — The closing lines of Dahl's final children's book, published posthumously
"A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men."
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972) — Willy Wonka's playful defense of absurdity
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) — Willy Wonka quoting Arthur O'Shaughnessy's poem as his personal motto
"Somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world."
Matilda (1988) — The narrator's observation on the extraordinary potential hidden within ordinary children
"There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination."
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) — Willy Wonka celebrating the supremacy of creative vision
"The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives."
Matilda (1988) — The narrator describing Matilda Wormwood's discovery of the public library
"I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. If you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it."
My Year (1993) — Dahl's posthumously published reflections on the importance of passionate engagement with life
"A little magic can take you a long way."
James and the Giant Peach (1961) — The narrator's gentle reminder of the transformative power of the extraordinary
Roald Dahl Quotes on Kindness, Goodness, and Character
No quality mattered more to Dahl than kindness. His villains are always cruel, his heroes always compassionate, and the moral architecture of his stories leaves no doubt about which side he was on. Whether describing the sunbeam radiance of good thoughts or the shriveling ugliness of spite, Dahl wrote about character with the clarity of a man who had seen both the best and worst of human nature.
"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."
The Twits (1980) — The narrator contrasting inner goodness with outward appearance in the book's famous opening passage
"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."
Interview with Todd McCormack, published in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More (1977 edition foreword)
"If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely."
The Twits (1980) — The distilled essence of Dahl's belief that inner beauty always finds outward expression
"It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you."
The Witches (1983) — The grandmother's reassurance to her grandson after he has been permanently transformed into a mouse
"Kindness — that simple word. To be kind — it covers everything, to my mind. If you're kind that's it."
Interview with Todd McCormack — Dahl expanding on his belief that kindness is the supreme human virtue
"I was glad my father was an eye doctor and not a foot doctor."
Danny, the Champion of the World (1975) — Danny's innocent humor revealing the warmth of his relationship with his father
"You'll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that."
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972) — Willy Wonka urging decisiveness over anxious hesitation
"A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom."
Interview with The New York Times (1971) — Dahl's characteristically blunt assessment of the writer's trade
Roald Dahl Quotes on Courage, Children, and Standing Up to Bullies
Every Dahl story is, at its core, a battle between the small and the powerful. His child heroes face terrifying adults armed with nothing but cleverness and nerve, and they win every time. These seven quotes reflect his unshakeable faith that courage is not the absence of fear but the refusal to let fear have the last word.
"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."
Matilda (1988) — The narrator on how literature shaped a child's extraordinary mind
"I understand what you're saying, and your comments are valuable, but I'm gonna ignore your advice."
Fantastic Mr Fox (1970) — Mr Fox's polite but resolute refusal to surrender to the farmers' siege
"Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog."
Matilda (1988) — Miss Trunchbull's twisted philosophy, which Dahl delighted in because it contained a paradoxical truth about boldness
"The matter with human beans is that they is absolutely refusing to believe in anything unless they is actually seeing it right in front of their own schnozzles."
The BFG (1982) — The Big Friendly Giant explaining human stubbornness to Sophie
"I is not a very clever giant, but I is trying my best."
The BFG (1982) — The BFG's humble self-assessment, capturing Dahl's conviction that effort matters more than ability
"A grown-up person who does not think there is anything more enjoyable than the company of small children is a person who has something wrong with them."
Danny, the Champion of the World (1975) — The narrator reflecting on the bond between Danny and his father
"Don't gobblefunk around with words."
The BFG (1982) — The BFG's ironic instruction to Sophie, delivered in his own gloriously invented language
Roald Dahl Quotes on Life, Writing, and the Human Spirit
Dahl was as candid about the terrors of the writing life as he was about the joys of storytelling. He wrote every day in a small brick hut at the bottom of his garden, sharpening six yellow pencils before beginning, and he never pretended the work was easy. These seven quotes reveal the man behind the magic: a disciplined craftsman, a wartime survivor, and a spirit who believed that books could save the world one child at a time.
"So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install a lovely bookshelf on the wall."
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) — The Oompa-Loompas' song after Mike Teavee is shrunk by television
"The writer must believe in what he is saying, even if what he is saying is preposterous."
"Lucky Break" essay in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More (1977) — Dahl on the secret of convincing storytelling
"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."
Interview with The Times (1988) — Dahl on his mission to make reading irresistible for children
"The prime function of the children's book writer is to write a book that is so absorbing, exciting, funny, fast and beautiful that the child will fall in love with it."
"Lucky Break" essay in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More (1977) — Dahl's artistic credo for children's literature
"I will not pretend I wasn't petrified. I was. But mixed in with the awful fear was a glorious feeling of excitement."
Going Solo (1986) — Dahl recounting his first solo flight as an RAF trainee pilot in Kenya
"A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not."
"Lucky Break" essay in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More (1977) — On the daily anxiety of the creative process
"I is the only nice and jumbly giant in Giant Country! I is THE BIG FRIENDLY GIANT! I is the BFG."
The BFG (1982) — The BFG proudly introducing himself to Sophie, one of the most beloved character introductions in children's literature
Frequently Asked Questions about Roald Dahl Quotes
What did Roald Dahl say about imagination and the power of stories?
Roald Dahl's philosophy of storytelling rested on the conviction that children deserve literature that is exciting, subversive, and emotionally honest rather than safe, sanitized, and morally instructive. His famous statement that 'those who don't believe in magic will never find it' encapsulates an artistic creed that valued wonder and imagination above all else, and his books consistently portray children as more perceptive, resourceful, and morally courageous than the adults around them. Dahl's storytelling technique combined fairy-tale structures with contemporary settings, creating worlds in which magical transformations are possible but always grounded in recognizable emotional realities — the loneliness of James before his giant peach, the poverty of Charlie before his golden ticket, the isolation of Matilda before she discovers her powers. His ability to write from a child's perspective with absolute authenticity made him the most beloved children's author of his generation.
What are Roald Dahl's most famous quotes on kindness and inner beauty?
Dahl's 'The Twits' contains one of his most quoted passages: 'If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face... A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly.' This idea — that inner character manifests in outward appearance — runs through all his children's fiction, where villains are invariably ugly (Miss Trunchbull, the Grand High Witch, Mr. and Mrs. Twit) and heroes radiate an attractiveness that comes from kindness, intelligence, and courage rather than physical beauty. Dahl's moral universe is stark and satisfying: the wicked are punished, the good are rewarded, and the punishments are often darkly comic — a combination that child readers find deeply reassuring and that adult readers recognize as reflecting a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of children's need for moral clarity and narrative justice.
How did Roald Dahl become one of the world's most beloved children's authors?
Dahl's children's books have sold over 300 million copies worldwide and have been translated into sixty-three languages, but his path to becoming a children's author was circuitous. He first gained literary fame as a writer of macabre short stories for adults, published in The New Yorker and collected in volumes like 'Someone Like You' (1953) and 'Kiss Kiss' (1960), which feature twist endings that rival O. Henry's in their ingenuity and surpass them in their darkness. He began writing for children with 'James and the Giant Peach' (1961), followed by 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' (1964), and discovered that his gift for creating vivid, slightly sinister worlds populated by memorable characters translated perfectly to children's literature. His wartime experience as a Royal Air Force fighter pilot, which left him with chronic pain from crash injuries, and the personal tragedies in his family life, including his daughter's death from measles encephalitis, gave his writing an emotional depth that elevated it beyond mere entertainment.
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