"Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."
— Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows)

"Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, Those soft touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and tugging, all one way."
— Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows)

"Take the adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes! 'Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithesome step forward, and you are out of your old life and into the new!"
— Kenneth Grahame

"Onion sauce! Onion Sauce!"
— Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows)

"But Mole stood still a moment, held in thought. As one wakened suddenly from a beautiful dream, who struggles to recall it, but can recapture nothing but a dim sense of the beauty in it, the beauty! Till that, too, fades away in its turn, and the dreamer bitterly accepts the hard, cold waking and all its penalties."
— Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows)

"It was a cold still afternoon with a hard steely sky overhead, when he slipped out of the warm parlour into the open air. The country lay bare and entirely leafless around him, and he thought that he had never seen so far and intimately into the insides of things as on that winter day when Nature was deep in her annual slumber and seemed to have kicked the clothes off. Copses, dells, quarries and all hidden places, which had been mysterious mines for exploration in leafy summer, now exposed themselves and their secrets pathetically, and seemed to ask him to overlook their shabby poverty for a while, til they could riot in rich masquerade as before, and trick and entice him with the old deceptions. It was pitiful in a way, and yet cheering-even exhilarating. He was glad that he liked the country undecorated, hard, and stripped of its finery. He had got down to the bare bones of it, and they were fine and strong and simple. He did not want the warm clover and the play of seeding grasses; the screens of quickset, the billowy drapery of beech and elm seemed best away; and with great cheerfulness of spirit he pushed on towards the Wild Wood, which lay before him low and threatening, like a black reef in some still southern sea."
— Kenneth Grahame

"After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working."
— Kenneth Grahame

"There’s nothing––absolutely nothing––half so much worth doing as messing about in boats."
— Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows)

"Beyond the Wild Wood comes the wild world,"said the Rat."And that's something that doesn't matter, either to you or to me. I've never been there, and I'm never going' nor you either, if you've got any sense at all."
— Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows)

"I'm such a clever Toad."
— Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows)

"Secrets had an immense attraction to him, because he never could keep one, and he enjoyed the sort of unhallowed thrill he experianced when he went and told another animal, after having faithfully promised not to."
— Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows)

"There seemed to be no end to this wood, and no beginning, and no difference in it, and, worse of all, no way out"
— Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows)

"I'm going to make an animal out of you, my boy!"
— Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows)

"There's nothing ... absolutely nothing ... half so much worth doing as simply messing around in boats."
— Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows)

"This day was only the first of man similar ones for the emancipated Mole, each of them longer and fuller of interest as the ripening summer moved onward. He learned to swim and to row, and entered into the joy of running water; and with his ear to the reed stems he caught, at intervals, something of what the wind went whispering so constantly among them."
— Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows)

"All along the backwater,
Through the rushes tall,
Ducks are a-dabbling,
Up tails all!

Ducks' tails, drakes' tails,
Yellow feet a-quiver,
Yellow bills all out of sight
Busy in the river! "
— Kenneth Grahame

"Secrets had an immense attraction for him, because he never could keep one, and he enjoyed the sort of unhallowed thrill he experienced when he went and told another animal, after having faithfully promised not to."
— Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows)

"We shall creep out quietly into the butler's pantry--" cried the Mole.
"--with out pistols and swords and sticks--" shouted ther Rat.
"--and rush in upon them," said Badger.
"--and whack 'em, and whack 'em, and whack 'em!" cried the Toad in ecstasy, running round and round the room, and jupming over the chairs."
— Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows)

"There is nothing--absolutely nothing--half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."
— Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows)

"When the girl returned, some hours later, she carried a tray, with a cup of fragrant tea steaming on it; and a plate piled up with very hot buttered toast, cut thick, very brown on both sides, with the butter running through the holes in great golden drops, like honey from the honeycomb. The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one's ramble was over and slippered feet were propped on the fender, of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries."
— Kenneth Grahame