Kenneth Grahame

The Wind in the Willows - 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.” (Pg 8)

“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.” (Pg 10)

“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? What nonsense it all is!” (Pg 20)

“It’s always as well to be in good time, isn’t it? (Pg 105)

“Everything seems asleep, and yet going on all the time.” (Pg 109)

“For my life, I confess to you, feels to me today somewhat narrow and circumscribed.” (Pg 111)

“’Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithe some step forward, and you are out of the old life and into the new.” (Pg 116)

“Be a cripple, if you think it’s exciting; be a bankrupt, for a change, if you’ve set your mind on it; but why choose to be a convict? (Pg 137)

“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 the raciest adventures; and why should they not be truly ours, as much as the somewhat inadequate things that really come off?” (Pg 151)