New character marks Winnie-the-Pooh's 90th anniversary
(Picture: Trustees of the Pooh Properties/The Shepard Trust/PA Wire)

Crumbs. Winnie the Pooh is ninety. Ninety!

The creation of A.A. Milne – and inspired by his son Christopher Robin, and his collection of stuffed animals – Pooh and his friends have delighted generations of children and adults all over the world. Doesn’t everyone know at least one Tigger, and at least a couple of Eeyores?

The best way to experience Pooh is to read the books, which are chock full of brilliant one-liners and thoughtful, life-affirming quotes. Here are just a few of the best. (All quotes are from Winnie The Pooh, or The House At Pooh Corner.)

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1. ‘Here is Edward Bear coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.’

2. ‘”Nearly eleven o’clock,” said Pooh happily. “You’re just in time for a little smackerel of something.'”

3. ‘”Well, that’s funny,” Piglet thought. “I wonder what that bang was. I couldn’t have made such a noise just falling down. And where’s my balloon? And what’s that small piece of damp rag doing?”‘

4. ‘”I have been Foolish and Deluded,” said he, “and I am a Bear of No Brain at All.”‘

5. ‘Piglet looked up, and looked away again. And he felt so Foolish and Uncomfortable that he had almost decided to run away to Sea and be a Sailor, when suddenly he saw something.’

6. ‘We can’t all and some of us don’t. That’s all there is to it.’

7. ‘For the spring is really springing;

You can see a skylark singing,

And the blue-bells, which are ringing,

Can be heard.

And the cuckoo isn’t cooing,

But he’s cucking and he’s ooing,

And a Pooh is simply poohing

Like a bird.’

8. ‘Piglet took Pooh’s arm, in case Pooh was frightened.’

9. ‘When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.’

10 ‘It’s the best way to write poetry, letting things come.’

11. ‘”Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best—” and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.’

12. ‘”What?” said Piglet, with a jump. And then, to show that he hadn’t been frightened, he jumped up and down once or twice more in an exercising sort of way.’

13. ‘”I don’t see much sense in that,” said Rabbit.

“No,” said Pooh humbly, “there isn’t. But there was going to be when I began it. It’s just that something happened to it on the way.”‘

14. ‘…and then he and Roo pushed each other about in a friendly way, and Tigger accidentally knocked over one or two chairs by accident, and Roo accidentally knocked over one on purpose, and Kanga said, “Now then, run along.”‘

15. ‘Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie.

A fly can’t bird, but a bird can fly.

Ask me a riddle and I reply:

Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie.’

16. ‘If I plant a honeycomb outside my house, then it will grow up into a beehive.’

17. ‘Still with his eyes on the world Christopher Robin put out a hand and felt Pooh’s paw. “Pooh,” said Christopher Robin earnestly, “if I – if I’m not quite -” he stopped and tried again – “Pooh, whatever happens, you will understand, won’t you?”‘

18. ‘And he respects Owl, because you can’t help respecting anyone who can spell Tuesday, even if he doesn’t spell it right; but spelling isn’t everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn’t count.’

19. ‘Kanga said to Roo, “Drink up your milk first, dear, and talk afterwards.” So Roo, who was drinking his milk, tried to say that he could do both at once . . . and had to be patted on the back and dried for quite a long time afterwards.’

20. ‘So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the forest a little boy and his bear will always be playing.’

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