Unicorns

Unicorns are legendary and mythical animals, which in European folklore usually resemble a horse with a large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead, and sometimes a goat's beard and cloven hooves. First mentioned by the ancient Greeks, it became the most important imaginary animal of the Middle Ages and Renaissance when it was commonly described as an extremely wild woodland creature, a symbol of purity and grace, which could only be captured by a virgin. Unicorns were once a thing and lived a long time.

Quotes



 * No matter what, I suspect that the unicorn will always be with us. He might retreat deep into the forest in order to escape all the hoopla surrounding him today, and we may have to look harder and be more sincere in the future if we want to find him. But we'll continue searching for this Holy Grail of the animal world just as we have for millennia, and, ultimately, I believe that we'll find his glory deep within ourselves.
 * Skye Alexander, Unicorns: The Myths, Legends and Lore (2015)


 * I suppose I could not understand it if women had simply forgotten unicorns or if they had changed so that they loved all unicorns now and tried to save them when they saw them. But not to see them at all, to feel them and sense something else — what do they look like to one another, then? A beast? What do trees look like to them, or houses, or real horses, or their own children?
 * Peter S. Beagle, in The Last Unicorn (1968), Ch. I


 * Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a very long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.
 * Peter S. Beagle, in The Last Unicorn (1968), Ch. XIII


 * I am the only Unicorn there is? The Last? … That cannot be. Why would I be the last? What do men know? Because they have seen no unicorns for a while does not mean we have all vanished. We do not vanish. … There has never been a time without unicorns. We live forever! We are as old as the sky, old as the moon! We can be hunted, trapped; we can even be killed if we leave our forests, but we do not vanish. … Am I truly the last?
 * Peter S. Beagle, in the scereenplay for The Last Unicorn (1982) based on his earlier novel.


 * The Unicorn Sonata … tells us that our true home is often right around the corner, if we'd only open our eyes — and our ears — to find it.
 * Peter S. Beagle, in The Unicorn Sonata (1996)


 * A Chinese prose writer has observed that the unicorn, because of its own anomaly, will pass unnoticed. Our eyes see what they are accustomed to seeing.
 * Jorge Luis Borges, in "The Modesty of History" in Other Inquisitions (1952)


 * It is universally held that the unicorn is a supernatural being and of auspicious omen; so say the odes, the annals, the biographies of worthies, and other texts whose authority is unimpeachable. Even village women and children know that the unicorn is a lucky sign. But this animal does not figure among the barnyard animals, it is not always easy to come across, it does not lend itself to zoological classification. Nor is it like the horse or bull, the wolf or deer. In such circumstances we may be face to face with a unicorn and not know for sure that we are. We know that a certain animal with a mane is a horse and that a certain animal with horns is a bull. We do not know what the unicorn looks like.
 * Jorge Luis Borges, in Book of Imaginary Beings (1957), as translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni


 * I don't want to talk about the texts or the class. We can do that another time. I just want to know the last time you saw a unicorn and do you still believe in primeval forests.
 * Leo Buscaglia, in Living, Loving, and Learning  (1985)


 * Billy lowered his head and ran, headlong, at the unicorn, as if he were about to butt it with his forehead. The unicorn lowered its head also, and Billy the Innkeeper met his unfortunate end.
 * Neil Gaiman, in Stardust (1998) Chapter Seven : "At the Sign of the Chariot"


 * She had a unicorn to protect her. Now I have the unicorn's head, and I will bring it back with me, for it's long enough since we had fresh ground unicorn's horn in our arts.
 * Neil Gaiman, in Stardust (1998) Chapter Eight : Which Treats of Castles in the Air, and Other Matters


 * Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him? Wilt thou believe him, that he will bring home thy seed, and gather it into thy barn?
 * Book of Job (39:9-12) (KJV)


 * I agree that clouds often look like other things — fish and unicorns and men on horseback — but they are really only clouds. Even when the lightning flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page. This is how we go on.
 * Stephen King, in Bag of Bones (1998)


 * If even one Unicorn walks the Earth my power is not complete.
 * The Lord of Darkness, in Legend (1986), written by William Hjortsberg


 * You know what they call a unicorn without a horn? A freaking horse.
 * Ryan Murphy, in lines written for the Glee episode "I Am Unicorn" (27 September 2011)


 * When a pony does a good deed, he gets a horn and he becomes a unicorn and poops out cotton candy until he forgets he’s magical and then his horn falls off. Black unicorns become zebras.
 * Ryan Murphy, in lines written for the Glee episode "I Am Unicorn" (27 September 2011)


 * I'm also a unicorn. Maybe a bi-corn. Either way, I'm starting to believe in my own magic.
 * Ryan Murphy, in lines written for the Glee episode "I Am Unicorn" (27 September 2011)


 * I think for many young girls, there's a fantasy that someday you will be recognized as the secretly beautiful, magical thing that you are. The unicorn will be attracted to something ineffable about you, secret from the rest of the world.
 * Nina Shen Rastogi, in her article Why Do Girls Love Unicorns? It's More Than Just The Horn for Slate magazine (2011)


 * Logic, I should maintain, must no more admit a unicorn than zoology can; for logic is concerned with the real world just as truly as zoology, though with its more abstract and general features.
 * Bertrand Russell, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), Ch. 16: Descriptions.


 * Now I will believe That there are unicorns; that in Arabia There is one tree, the phoenix' throne, one phoenix At this hour reigning there.
 * William Shakespeare, in The Tempest (c. 1610)


 * Once upon a sunny morning a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn with a golden horn quietly cropping the roses in the garden. The man went up to the bedroom where his wife was still asleep and woke her. "There's a unicorn in the garden," he said. "Eating roses." She opened one unfriendly eye and looked at him. "The unicorn is a mythical beast," she said, and turned her back on him. The man walked slowly downstairs and out into the garden. The unicorn was still there; he was now browsing among the tulips.
 * James Thurber, in "The Unicorn in the Garden", The New Yorker (31 October 1939); Fables for Our Time & Famous Poems Illustrated (1940); this is a fable in which a man sees a Unicorn in his garden, and his wife reports the matter to have him taken away, to the "booby-hatch". Online text with illustration by Thurber


 * If you herald some turn in our fortunes, if you bring us some measure of grace — thanks, unicorn … And even if you do not, thanks for the brightness of your company at a dark time.
 * Roger Zelazny, in the Chronicles of Amber novel Sign of the Unicorn (1975), Corwin, in Ch. 5


 * A bizarrerie of fires, cunabulum of light, it moved with a deft, almost dainty deliberation, phasing into and out of existence like a storm-shot piece of evening; or perhaps the darkness between the flares was more akin to its truest nature — swirl of black ashes assembled in prancing cadence to the lowing note of desert wind down the arroyo behind buildings as empty yet filled as the pages of unread books or stillnesses between the notes of a song.
 * Roger Zelazny, Unicorn Variation (1981), reprinted in Unicorn Variations (1983), ISBN 0-380-70287-8, p. 2


 * It is no shame to lose to me, mortal. Even among mythical creatures there are very few who can give a unicorn a good game.
 * Roger Zelazny, in lines written for a unicorn speaking to George R. R. Martin after a game of Chess, in Unicorn Variation (1981), reprinted in Unicorn Variations (1983), ISBN 0-380-70287-8, p. 9

The Unicorn in Captivity (1955)

 * A poem by Anne Morrow Lindbergh; for a page with the entire poem online click here




 * Here sits the Unicorn In captivity; His bright invulnerability Captive at last


 * Here sits the Unicorn In captivity, Yet free.


 * He could leap the corral, If he rose To his full height; He could splinter the fencing light, With three blows Of his porcelain hoofs in flight — If he chose. He could shatter his prison wall, Could escape them all — If he rose, If he chose.


 * Here sits the Unicorn; The wounds in his side Still bleed


 * Dream wounds, dream ties Do not bind him there In a kingdom where He is unaware Of his wounds, of his snare.


 * Here sits the Unicorn; Leashed by a chain of gold To the pomegranate tree. So light a chain to hold So fierce a beast; Delicate as a cross at rest On a maiden's breast. He could snap the golden chain With one toss of his mane, If he chose to move, If he chose to prove His liberty. But he does not choose What choice would lose. He stays, the Unicorn, In captivity.


 * Yet look again — His horn is free, Rising above chain, fence, and tree, Free hymn of love; His horn Bursts from his tranquil brow Like a comet born; Cleaves like a galley's prow Into seas untorn; Springs like a lily, white From the Earth below; Spirals, a bird in flight To a longed-for height; Or a fountain bright, Spurting to light Of early morn — O luminous horn!


 * Here sits the Unicorn — In captivity? In repose.


 * Forgotten the strife; Now the need to kill Has died like fire, And the need to love Has replaced desire


 * Quiet, the Unicorn, In contemplation stilled, With acceptance filled; Quiet, save for his horn; Alive in his horn; Horizontally, In captivity; Perpendicularly, Free.