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Dragon Quotes

Dragon quotes

Dragon Quotes from the old website.

Originally published 20 June 2010. Last updated 25 February 2024.

Featuring dragon quotes and sayings from famous books, series, movies, and more.

Goodness, I just realized how much of a mess this page had become!

I’m trying to re-organize it to make the quote reading and search experience easier for visitors.

I’ll be slowly expanding this section and hope that the organization helps.

Table of Contents

1. Famous dragon quotes

Scroll down (will move to a new page later). Includes quotes from media / movies / TV.

2. Philosopher dragon quotes

Scroll down (will move to a new page later)

3. Pern dragon quotes

A selection of quotes from the legendary Dragonriders of Pern series.

4. Dragon’s Milk quotes

These quotes from Susan Fletcher’s The Dragon Chronicles were super fun to read and compile from way back when!

5. Skyrim dragon quotes

You can gain glimpses of this game’s fascinating lore through these Skyrim dragon quotes. Includes quotes by Skyrim guards, on the Dragonborn, and of The Dragon War. Fifth installment in The Elder Scrolls series.

6. Game of Thrones dragon quotes

Dragon quotes from the Game of Thrones HBO series, and original book series by George R.R. Martin.

7. Asian dragon quotes

Small collection of Asian dragon quotations. Hope to grow this post over time. Includes quotes by Confucius, Ryokan, and proverbs.

8. Dragon Bible verses

3 posts:

9. Dragon quotes about life

Not yet started

10. Other dragon quotes

Scroll down (will move to a new page later)


Famous Dragon Quotes

“Whuf” added the dragon.
~ Rick Cook, “Wizardry Consulted”

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
~ Dilbert by Scott Adams

Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!
~ Bilbo Baggins (The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien)

smaug_john_howe
Smaug by John Howe | www.john-howe.com

It never does to leave a live Dragon out of the equation.
~ The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien

This of course is the way to talk to dragons, if you don’t want to reveal your proper name (which is wise), and don’t want to infuriate them by a flat refusal (which is also very wise). No dragon can resist the fascination of riddling talk and of wasting time to trying to understand it.
~ The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien

Smaug certainly looked asleep, almost dead and dark, with scarcely a snore more than a whiff of unseen steam, when Bilbo peeped once more from the entrance. He was just about to step out onto the floor when he caught a sudden thin ray of red from under the drooping lid of Smaug’s left eye. He was only pretending to sleep! He was watching the tunnel entrance!
~ The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien

“I imagined a dragon inside myself,” Quaid explains. “We all have one, in one form or another. To me, this dragon is both the wild nature of ourselves and our conscience in his embodiment of the Old Code ethical behavior and morality. At the same time, he’s our unconscious, the place from which our dreams arise. I just spoke my lines to the dragon within me.”
~ Dennis Quaid on “Dragonheart”

dragonattack
Dragon Attack by Clyde Caldwell | www.clydecaldwell.com

Come not between the dragon and his wrath.
~ Shakespeare, King Lear

The enlightened man enjoys perfect freedom in active life. He is like a dragon supported by deep waters or like a tiger that commands its mountain retreat. The man who is not enlightened drifts about in the affairs of the world. He is like a ram that gets its horns caught in a fence or like a man who waits for a hare to run against a tree stump and stun itself.
~ Hekiganroku by Setcho

When the old mapmakers got to the edge of the world they used to write: “Beyond this place, there be Dragons.”
~ Barclay Cole

I was born to catch dragons in their dens and pick flowers
To tell tales and laugh away the morning
To drift and dream like a lazy stream
And walk barefoot across sunshine days.
~ Sunshine Days and Foggy Nights, James Kavanaugh

“Here be Dragons.”
~ Early European map makers’ warning

It may be that dragons really did exist and they were so valuable they were simply hunted to extinction.
~ Carole Fontaine

The question is always the same with a dragon: will he talk with you or will he eat you? If you can count on his doing the former, and not doing the latter, why then you’re a dragonlord.
~ The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula LeGuin

Dragon quotes

Header image from concept art of World of Warcraft (please email me if you know the name of the artist).

Dragon Philosopher Quotes

When a draco has eaten much fruit, it seeks the juice of the bitter lettuce; it has been seen to do this.
~ Aristotle

The dragon is a serpent destitute of venom; its head placed beneath the threshold of a door, the gods being duly propitiated by prayers, will ensure good fortune to the house, it is said.
~ Pliny

The javelin-snake (amphiptere) hurls itself from the branches of trees.
~ Pliny the Elder

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

Every new stroke of civilization has cost the lives of countless brave men, who have fallen defeated by the dragon, in their efforts to win the apples of the Hesperides, or the fleece of gold.
~ D. H. Lawrence, 1885-1930

Memorials reveal that captive maternals came not to resurrect but to properly bury George Jackson; and to witness and testify to the inevitability of dragons emerging from dungeons.
~ Joy James on George Jackson

Quotes from Books and Movies

HogwartsCr
Hogwarts School Crest

‘Never tickle a sleeping dragon’.
~ Hogwarts’ school motto, of the Harry Potter series

Qn: Why did you choose “never tickle a sleeping dragon” as your motto?

Ans: Lots of schools have pointless mottos like ‘reach for the stars’ or ‘persevere and endure’; I wanted something useful.
~ Chat interview with J. K. Rowling

By the time I reached it the Cadillac was half a mile away, burning across the desert like an escaping dragon.
~ Studio 5, The Stars, by J.G. Ballard 🌟

We Dragons love to sing.
~ Draco in Dragonheart

Long ago, when man was young and the dragon already old, the wisest of our race took pity on man, so he gathered together all the dragons, making them vow to watch over man always. And at the moment of his death, the night became alive with those stars. And thus was born the Dragons’ Heaven. But when we die, not all dragons are admitted to this shining place. No, we have to earn it! And if we don’t, our spirit disappears as if we never were.
~ Draco in Dragonheart

Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant!
Fiend angelical!
Dove-feather’d raven!
Wolvish ravening lamb!
~ Juliet about Romeo
in Romeo & Juliet, Shakespeare

The dragon wing of night o’erspreads the earth.
~ Achilles, after killing Hector
in Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare

It’s hard to stop Muggles from noticing us if we’re keeping dragons in the back garden – anyway, you can’t tame dragons, it’s dangerous.
~ Ron Weasley, Harry Potter series

In the Dark Ages, Magic was a weapon. Love was a mystery. Adventure was everywhere…And Dragons were real.
~ Poster tag of Dragonslayer [1981]

Out of the sea will rise Behemoth and Leviathan and sail round the high-pooped galleys, as they do on the delightful maps of those ages when books on geography were actually readable.
~ Excerpt from ‘The Decay of Lying’, Oscar Wilde

“Dragons don’t ask for maidens,” he (Selendrile) said. “Dragons are offered maidens.”
~ Dragon’s Bait, Vivian Vande Velde

Yet to a truly long-lived being – an elf, for example, or a dragon – minutes can pass tenfold, a hundredfold, without arousing interest or concern. A single such interval is space for a slow inhalation, or an idle thought. It is certainly not time enough for serious cogitation, never enough for the making of an important decision.
~ Fistandantilus Reborn, Douglas Niles

“My word of wisdom for the day is this: Old dragons, like old thorns, can still prick. And I am a very old dragon. Take care.”
~ The Dragon’s Boy, Jane Yolen

dragon quotes

Header image by wild-e-eeep.

No doubt but there is none other beeste comparable to the mightie dragon in awesome power and majestie, and few so worthie of the diligent studies of wise men.
~ Gildas Magus, Ars Draconis, 1465

A person who has been hypnotised by a dragon should be made to do a large number of complicated mathematical sums.
~ Dragonology

A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys
Painted wings and giants’s rings make way for other toys.
~ Puff the Magic Dragon, Peter Yarrow and Leonard Tipton

“It’s a funny thing being taken under the wing of a dragon; it’s warmer than you think.”
~ From the motion picture Gangs of New York

If you don’t believe in dragons,
It is curiously true
That the dragons you disparage
Choose to not believe in you.
~ Jack Prelutsky

Dragons have a different perspective on things than mortals do.
…If dragons weren’t remarkably vain and easy to manipulate I’d
have gone mad years ago.
~ Killer in the Reign, Rosemary and India Edghill

People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.
~ Ursula K. Le Guin

She hurried at his words, beset with fears,
For there were sleeping dragons all around…
~ John Keats, The Eve of St AgnesXL

They were strange books. They spoke about mercury, salt, dragons, and kings, and he didn’t understand any of it.
~ The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

The crest was a dragon, whose head reached out toward
the sun. Under that came the motto – Arduus ad Solem.
[meaning “striving towards the sun”]
~ Paul Watkins, Stand Before Your God:
A Boarding School Memoir

Merlin foretold from an omen of a dragon that as King, Uther
would have a powerful son, overlord of vast territories.
Uther adopted the style ‘Pendragon’ meaning ‘Dragon’s Head’
and later, through the good offices of Merlin, fathered Arthur.
~ King Arthur, Pitkin Guides

I am the dragon from the desert, who comes from nowhere and leaves no trace!
~ Jen, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon


Dragon quotes from the animation, Pete’s Dragon:

First there’s a dragon and now money talks. Will miracles ever cease?
~ Doc Terminus

Well if there’s enough room for a chowder-head like you, then there’s more than enough room for a dragon.
~ Nora

Lampie: “You know anything about dragons?”
Dr. Terminus: “Of course I do. I see them in all the big cities going down the streets, with that funny little walk, wearing bright colors, fluttering around…”


Dragon quotes
Image from Fēng Yíng Yuè on Vocaloid Wiki.

Other Quotes about Dragons

Miscellaneous dragon quotes collected over the years. Enjoy!

Jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretence of keeping it alive.
~ Havelock Ellis

The Scorpion connects with the Serpent through the Dragon.
~ Dion Fortune

“…and ye shall fly on the wings of dragons…”
~ Wicca

…His skin more hard than brass was found,
That sword nor spear could pierce nor wound.
~ St. George and the Dragon, Olde English

“I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon
he was heartily afraid of the princess.”
~ G.K. Chesterton

“Dragons, you know, we have a good deal of biology and zoology about the dragon; we know their habits. The dragon tends to guard things, and he usually has these guarded in a cave…
Now dragons don’t know what to do either with beautiful girls or gold, but they just hang on. There are people like this. We call them creeps.”
~ Joseph Campbell

“Oh to be a dragon, a symbol of the power of heaven.”
~ O to be a dragon, Marianne Moore; contributed by Stacy

[on the subject of dragons]: One must believe before they can see the magic.
~ Connie Hill, visitor to Dragonsinn [early days in 2000]

If you can’t take the heat, don’t tickle the dragon.
~ Scott Fahlman

“May the dragon of life only roast your hot-dogs
and never burn your buns!”
~ wolfdyke on thinkexist.com

If you happen upon the skull of a dragon,
leave that place quickly.
For whatever killed it, may still be around.
~ Thieves’ Proverb

Long live dragons.
~ Dragon-lovers’ sign-off

Dragon quotes
Image by Zapista

From The Dragon Spirit: How to Self-Market Your Dream, by Ron Rubin and Stuart Gold. List compiled by Lady Rose from 2witchesblog (private):

Change is a dragon – ride it and transform.
Everything great and colorful is because of the dragon.
The greatness of a dragon is not judged by its strength, but by its perseverance.
Those who can see a dragon are those who believe they can.
The ascent of a dragon into heaven is a majesty beyond compare.
When word of a dragon came, all sought out its existence.
A dragon achieves its destiny by creating it.
The brilliance of a dragon is second only to the stars in heaven.
A true dragon transforms action into right, and right into duty.
A dragon that does not give its heart wings will never fly.
Without rightful practice, a dragon cannot exist.
A dragon that soars knows that there is no such thing as a pathless path.

Claim and ride your dragon, discover the magic in you and live your dreams now.
~ Lady Rose

“Much unlike a mortal
who hurts the ones they love
A dragon’s love is forever
and as pure as a peaceful dove.”
~ IslandPrincess.org

A dragon collects treasure mainly for its beauty — you don’t think there can be too much beauty, do you?
~ Kacdaninymila, gold dragon, Dungeons & Dragons: Draconomicon: The Book of Dragons (from TVtropes.org)

May dragons take flight in your dreams tonight!
~ Jess @ Dragonsinn (one of my personal dragon quotes at age 16)


By Jess

Jess Chua is an award-winning writer and sketch artist. She's been the keeper of Dragonsinn since 1999. She works in the online writing/editing field and enjoys yoga, reading, and design. Shop our hand-drawn merch or join the newsletter to stay in touch with dragon news and original art updates.

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