Smiling Dragons

Tada!!! After much searching I found the phrase that nailed me to the writers' bench years ago. American Heritage published it in the 1960's or 70's. It was written by Ernest Thayer in the 1880's. I found it online in GER's Favorite Quotes. Here is the full quote which started me off yearning to write and write well:

"We have reached the age, those of us to whom fortune

has assigned a post in life's struggle,

when beaten and smashed and biffed by

the lashing of the dragon's tail,

we begin to appreciate that the old man

was not such a fool after all.

We saw our parents wrestling with the same dragon, and we

thought, though we never spoke the thought aloud,

'Why don't he hit him on the head?'

Alas, comrades, we know now.

We have hit the dragon on the head

and we have seen the dragon smile."

-- Ernest Lawrence Thayer, at his tenth reunion at Harvard ,

re-published American Heritage, 1976.