Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget. / For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.

St George he was for England, / And before he killed the dragon / He drank a pint of English ale / Out of an English flagon.

The men that worked for England / They have their graves at home.

Then the man smiled, and his smile was a shock, for it was all on one side, going up in the right cheek and down in the left.
There was nothing, rationally speaking, to scare anyone about this. Many people have this nervous trick of a crooked smile, and in many it is even attractive. But in all Syme's circumstances, with the dark dawn and the deadly errand and the loneliness on the great dripping stones, there was something unnerving in it. There was the silent river and the silent man, a man of even classic face. And there was the last nightmare touch that his smile suddenly went wrong.

Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

There are many definite methods, honest and dishonest, which make people rich; the only ''instinct'' I know of which does it is that instinct which theological Christianity crudely describes as ''the sin of avarice.''