From Learner's reading to his children, in which Bree, who once thought of himself as noble war horse and trusty steed, is comforted by the old Hermit as Bree had just tucked tail and run for his life while his rider, Shasta, jumped off to turn and fight off the lion (Aslan) chasing his injured female friend, Aravis, on her horse, Hwin:
“‘My good Horse,’ said the Hermit, who had approached them unnoticed because his bare feet made so little noise on that sweet, dewy grass. ‘My good Horse, you’ve lost nothing but your self-conceit. No, no, cousin. Don’t put back your ears and shake your mane at me. If you are really so humbled as you sounded a minute ago, you must learn to listen to sense. You’re not quite the great Horse you had come to think, from living among poor dumb horses. Of course you were braver and cleverer than them. You could hardly help being that. It doesn’t follow that you’ll be anyone very special in Narnia. But as long as you know you’re nobody very special, you’ll be a very decent sort of Horse, on the whole...’”
- from The Horse and His Boy, by C.S. Lewis, pgs. 151-152
