H. G. Wells

“ The marble tower, again, is a great building, on which we devise devious slanting ways down which marbles run. I do not know why it is amusing to make a marble run down a long intricate path, and dollop down steps, and come almost but not quite to a stop, and rush out of dark places and across little bridges of card: it is, and we often do it. ”

“ The peculiar joy of the mountain railway is that, if it is properly made, a loaded car--not a toy engine; it is too rough a game for delicate, respectable engines--will career from top to bottom of the system, and go this way and that as your cunningly-arranged switches determine ”

“ Castles are done with bricks and cardboard turrets and a portcullis of card, and drawbridge and moats; they are a mere special sort of city- building, done because we have a box of men in armor. We could reconstruct all sorts of historical periods if the toy soldier makers would provide us with people. But at present, as I have already complained, they make scarcely anything but contemporary fighting men. ”