Kenneth Grahame > Quotes

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.”
― 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

“There’s nothing––absolutely nothing––half so much worth doing as messing about in boats.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind In The Willows

“Onion sauce! Onion Sauce!”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“He saw clearly how plain and simple - how narrow, even - it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.”
― 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, The Wind in the Willows

“I'm such a clever Toad.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“•"Badger hates Society, and invitations, and dinner, and all that sort of thing.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“It's a goodly life that you lead, friends; no doubt the best in the world, if only you are strong enough to lead it!'
'Yes, it's the life, the only life, to live,' responded the Water Rat dreamily, and without his usual whole-hearted conviction.
'I did not exactly say that,' the stranger replied cautiously, 'but no doubt it's the best. I've tried it, and I know. And because I've tried it - six months of it - and know it's the best, here I am, footsore and hungry, tramping away from it, tramping southward, following the old call, back to the old life, the life which is mine and which will not let me go.”
― 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

“Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.”
― 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

“Here today, up and off to somewhere else tomorrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement! The whole world before you, and a horizon that's always changing!”
― 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

“No animal, according to the rules of animal-etiquette, is ever expected to do anything strenuous, or heroic, or even moderately active during the off-season of winter.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“There he got out the luncheon-basket and packed a simple meal, in which, remembering the stranger's origin and preferences, he took care to include a yard of long French bread, a sausage out of which the garlic sang, some cheese which lay down and cried, and a long-necked straw-covered flask wherein lay bottled sunshine shed and garnered on far Southern slopes.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“It seemed a place where heroes could fitly feast after victory, where weary harvesters could line up in scores along the table and keep their Harvest Home with mirth and song, or where two or three friends of simple tastes could sit about as they pleased and eat and smoke and talk in comfort and contentment.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“Everything seems asleep, and yet going on all the time. It is a goodly
life that you lead, friend; no doubt the best in the world, if only you are
strong enough to lead it!”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spellbound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“Supper was finished at last, and each animal felt that his skin was now as tight as was decently safe.”
― Kenneth Grahame

“And beyond the Wild Wood again?' he asked. 'Where it's all blue and dim and one sees what may be hills or perhaps they mayn't and something like the smoke of towns or is it only cloud drift.'
'Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wild World,' said the Rat. 'And that's something the doesn't matter either to you or me.”
― 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

“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

“They told me that Billy would never come back any more, and I stared out of the window at the sun which came back, right enough, every day, and their news conveyed nothing whatever to me.”
― Kenneth Grahame, Dream Days

“Well, very long ago, on the spot where the Wild Wood waves now, before ever it had planted itself and grown up to what it now is, there was a city - a city of people, you know. Here, where we are standing, they lived, and walked, and talked, and slept, and carried on their business. Here they stabled their horses and feasted, from here they rode out to fight or drove out to trade. They were a powerful people, and rich, and great builders. They built to last, for they thought their city would last for ever.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“Good, bad, and indifferent - It takes all sorts to make a world.”
― Kenneth Grahame

“Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror - indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy - but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august presence was very, very near.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“Nothing seems really to matter, that's the charm of it. Whether you get
away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your destination or
whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at
all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and
when you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can do
it if you like, but you'd much better not.”
― Kenneth Grahame

“Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World," said the Rat. "And that's something that doesn't matter, either to you or me. I've never been there, and I'm never going, nor you either, if you've got any sense at all. Don't ever refer to it again, please.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“Toad's ancestral home, won back by matchless valour, consummate strategy, and a proper handling of sticks.”
― 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

“And perhaps we have reason to be very grateful that, both as children and long afterwards, we are never allowed to guess how the absorbing pursuit of the moment will appear, not only to others, but to ourselves, a very short time hence.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Golden Age

“You see all the other fellows were so active and earnest and all that sort of thing- always rampaging, and skirmishing, and scouring the desert sands, and pacing the margin of the sea, and chasing knights all over the place, and devouring damsels, and going on generally- whereas I liked to get my meals regular and then to prop my back against a bit of rock and snooze a bit, and wake up and think of things going on and how they kept going on just the same, you know!”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Reluctant Dragon

“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

“Truly wise men called on each element alike to minister to their joy, and while the touch of sun-bathed air, the fragrance of garden soil, the ductible qualities of mud, and the spark-whirling rapture of playing with fire, had each their special charm, they did not overlook the bliss of getting their feet wet.”
― Kenneth Grahame, Dream Days

“solemnly”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“The boat struck the bank full tilt. The dreamer, the joyous oarsman, lay on his back at the bottom of the boat, his heels in the air.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“Most of the low latticed windows were innocent of blinds, and to the lookers-in from outside, the inmates, gathered round the tea-table, absorbed in handiwork, or talking with laughter or gesture, had each that happy grace which is the last thing the skilled actor shall capture – the natural grace which goes with perfect unconsciousness of observation. Moving at will from one theater to another, the two spectators, so far from home themselves, had something of wistfulness in their eyes...”
― Kenneth Grahame

“Toad, with no one to check his statements or to criticize in an unfriendly spirit, rather let himself go. Indeed, much that he related belonged more properly to the category of what-might-have-happened-had-I-only-thought-of-it-in-time-instead-of-ten-minutes-afterwards. Those are always the best and raciest adventures; and why should they not be truly ours, as much as the somewhat inadequate things that really come off?”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“Why can't fellows be allowed to do what they like when they like and as they like, instead of other fellows sitting on banks and watching them all the time and making remarks and poetry and things about them?”
― Kenneth Grahame

“No, I can't stop for sonnets; my mother is sitting up. I'll look you up tomorrow, sometime or other, and do for goodness' sake try and realise that you're a pestilential scourge, or your find yourself in a most awful fix. Good-night!”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Reluctant Dragon

“Since early morning he had been swimming in the river, in company with his friends the ducks. And when the ducks stood on their heads suddenly, as ducks will, he would dive down and tickle their necks, just under where their chins would be if ducks had chins, till they were forced to come to the surface again in a hurry, spluttering and angry and shaking their feathers at him, for it is impossible to say quite all you feel when your head is under water.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“What is the meaning of this gross outrage?”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“...Absorbed in the new scents, the sounds, and the sunlight...”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows