The Wind in the Willows quotes

And instead of having an uneasy conscience pricking him and whispering “whitewash!” he somehow could only feel how jolly it was to be the only idle dog among all these busy citizens.

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.

He thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river.

“Nice? It’s the only thing,” said the Water Rat solemnly as he leant forward for his stroke. “

Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing⁠—absolute nothing⁠—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.

Simply messing,” he went on dreamily: “messing—about—in—boats; messing—”

“By it and with it and on it and in it,” said the Rat. “It’s brother and sister to me, and aunts, and company, and food and drink, and (naturally) washing. It’s my world, and I don’t want any other.

What it hasn’t got is not worth having, and what it doesn’t know is not worth knowing.

Lord! the times we’ve had together! Whether in winter or summer, spring or autumn, it’s always got its fun and its excitements.

“By it and with it and on it and in it,” said the Rat. “

It’s brother and sister to me, and aunts, and company, and food and drink, and (naturally) washing.

It’s my world, and I don’t want any other. What it hasn’t got is not worth having, and what it doesn’t know is not worth knowing. Lord! the times we’ve had together!

“O, please let me,” said the Mole. So, of course, the Rat let him.

Packing the basket was not quite such pleasant work as unpacking the basket. It never is.

But the Mole was bent on enjoying everything, and although just when he had got the basket packed and strapped up tightly he saw a plate staring up at him from the grass, and when the job had been done again the Rat pointed out …

“Glorious, stirring sight!” murmured Toad, never offering to move. “

The poetry of motion! The real way to travel! The only way to travel!

Here today—in next week tomorrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped—always somebody else’s horizon! O bliss! O poop-poop! O my! O my!”

Everything was very still now. The dusk advanced on him steadily, rapidly, gathering in behind and before; and the light seemed to be draining away like flood-water.

Then the faces began.

It was over his shoulder, and indistinctly, that he first thought he saw a face, a little, evil, wedge-shaped face, looking out at him from a hole. When he turned and confronted it, the thing had vanished.

“Really, Rat,” said the Mole, quite pettishly, “I think we’ve had enough of this folly. Who ever heard of a doormat telling anyone anything? They simply don’t do it. They are not that sort at all.

Doormats know their place.

”

The Badger simply beamed on him. “That’s exactly what I say,” he replied. “

There’s no security, or peace and tranquillity, except underground.

And then, if your ideas get larger and you want to expand—why, a dig and a scrape, and there you are! If you feel your house is a bit too big, you stop up a hole or two, and there you are again!

“Who can tell?” said the Badger. “

People come⁠—they stay for a while, they flourish, they build⁠—and they go. It is their way. But we remain.

There were badgers here, I’ve been told, long before that same city ever came to be. And now there are badgers here again.

And they don’t bother about the future, either—the future when perhaps the people will move in again—for a time—as may very well be. The Wild Wood is pretty well populated by now; with all the usual lot, good, bad, and indifferent—I name no names.

It takes all sorts to make a world.

But I fancy you know something about them yourself by this time.”

“Smart piece of work that!” he remarked to himself chuckling. “

Brain against brute force⁠—and brain came out on the top⁠—as it’s bound to do.

Poor old Ratty! My! won’t he catch it when the Badger gets back! A worthy fellow, Ratty, with many good qualities, but very little intelligence and absolutely no education.

and with its soft touch came instant oblivion.

For this is the last best gift that the kindly demigod is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness.

Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and lighthearted as before.

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 it 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.

“There, there,” said Toad, graciously and affably, “never mind; think no more about it.

I have several aunts who ought to be washerwomen.

”

“We’re not,” said the Toad in a huff. “

I have a very elegant figure⁠—for what I am.

”

and even as he lay in bed at night he thought he could make out, passing in the darkness overhead, the beat and quiver of impatient pinions, obedient to the peremptory call.

Nature’s Grand Hotel has its Season, like the others.

As the guests one by one pack, pay, and depart, and the seats at the table-d’hôte shrink pitifully at each succeeding meal; as suites of rooms are closed, carpets taken up, and waiters sent away;

“And you, you will come too, young brother; for the days pass, and never return, and the South still waits for you.

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 the old life and into the new!

You can easily overtake me on the road, for you are young, and I am ageing and go softly. I will linger, and look back; and at last I will surely see you coming, eager and lighthearted, with all the South in your face!”

The voice died away and ceased as an insect’s tiny trumpet dwindles swiftly into silence; and the Water Rat, paralysed and staring, saw at last but a distant speck on the white surface of the road.

Mechanically he rose and proceeded to repack the luncheon-basket, carefully and without haste. Mechanically he returned home, gathered together a few small necessaries and special treasures he was fond of, and put them in a satchel;

He took one hasty glance at his eyes; found them, to his great gratification, clear and dark and brown again as before; and then sat down and tried to cheer him up and help him to relate what had happened to him.

Poor Ratty did his best, by degrees, to explain things; but how could he put into cold words what had mostly been suggestion?

How recall, for another’s benefit, the haunting sea voices that had sung to him, how reproduce at secondhand the magic of the Seafarer’s hundred reminiscences?

then, with a leap of the heart, remembered everything—his escape, his flight, his pursuit; remembered, first and best thing of all, that he was free!

Free! The word and the thought alone were worth fifty blankets.

He was warm from end to end as he thought of the jolly world outside, waiting eagerly for him to make his triumphal entrance, ready to serve him and play up to him, anxious to help him and to keep him company, as it always …

The practical Toad cared very much indeed, and he could have kicked the road for its helpless silence when every minute was of importance to him.

The reserved rustic road was presently joined by a shy little brother in the shape of a canal, which took its hand and ambled along by its side in perfect confidence, but with the same tongue-tied, uncommunicative attitude towards strangers.

“Bother them!” said Toad to himself. “But, anyhow, one thing’s clear. They must both be coming from somewhere, and going to somewhere. You can’t get over that, Toad, my boy!” So he marched on patiently by the water’s edge.

Toad was fairly cornered. He looked for escape this way and that, saw that he was too far from the bank for a flying leap, and sullenly resigned himself to his fate.

“If it comes to that,” he thought in desperation, “I suppose any fool can wash!”

He fetched tub, soap, and other necessaries from the cabin, selected a few garments at random, tried to recollect what he had seen in casual glances through laundry windows, and set to.

A long half-hour passed, and every minute of it saw Toad getting crosser and crosser. Nothing that he could do to the things seemed to please them or do them good.

He tried coaxing, he tried slapping, he tried punching; they smiled back at him out of the tub unconverted, happy in their original sin.

Once or twice he looked nervously over his shoulder at the barge-woman, but she appeared to be gazing out in front of her, absorbed in her steering. His back ached badly, and he noticed with dismay that his paws were beginning to get all crinkly.

“I’ve been watching you all the time,” she gasped. “I thought you must be a humbug all along, from the conceited way you talked. Pretty washerwoman you are! Never washed so much as a dish-clout in your life, I’ll lay!”

Toad’s temper, which had been simmering viciously for some time, now fairly boiled over, and he lost all control of himself.

“You common, low, fat barge-woman!” he shouted; “don’t you dare to talk to your betters like that! Washerwoman indeed! I would have you to know that I am a Toad, a very well-known, respected, distinguished Toad!

The barge-woman was still laughing when he drew up level with her.

“Put yourself through your mangle, washerwoman,” she called out, “and iron your face and crimp it, and you’ll pass for quite a decent-looking Toad!”

Toad never paused to reply. Solid revenge was what he wanted, not cheap, windy, verbal triumphs, though he had a thing or two in his mind that he would have liked to say. He saw what he wanted ahead of him.

“What?” he said, “me sell this beautiful young horse of mine? O, no; it’s out of the question. Who’s going to take the washing home to my customers every week? Besides, I’m too fond of him, and he simply dotes on me.”

“Try and love a donkey,” suggested the gipsy. “Some people do.”

“You don’t seem to see,” continued Toad, “that this fine horse of mine is a cut above you altogether. He’s a blood horse, he is, partly; not the part you see, of course—another part.

He got so puffed up with conceit that he made up a song as he walked in praise of himself, and sang it at the top of his voice, though there was no one to hear it but him.

It was, perhaps, the most conceited song that any animal ever composed.

“The world has held great Heroes, As history-books have showed; But never a name to go down to fame Compared with that of Toad!

With a half-turn of the wheel the Toad sent the car crashing through the low hedge that ran along the roadside. One mighty bound, a violent shock, and the wheels of the car were churning up the thick mud of a horsepond.

Toad found himself flying through the air with the strong upward rush and delicate curve of a swallow.

He liked the motion, and was just beginning to wonder whether it would go on until he developed wings and turned into a Toad-bird, when he landed on his back with a thump, in the soft, rich grass of a meadow.

You know that you’ve never had anything but trouble from motorcars from the moment you first set eyes on one. But if you will be mixed up with them—as you generally are, five minutes after you’ve started—why steal them?

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?

When are you going to be sensible and think of your friends, and try and be a credit to them?

Do you suppose it’s any pleasure to me, for instance, to hear animals saying, as I go about, that I’m the chap that keeps company with gaol-birds?”

Now, it was a very comforting point in Toad’s character that he was a thoroughly good-hearted animal, and never minded being jawed by those who were his real friends.

And even when most set upon a thing, he was always able to see the other side of the question. So although, while the Rat was talking so seriously, he kept saying to himself mutinously, “But it was fun, though! Awful fun!”

Toad was quite alarmed at this very serious and portentous style of greeting; but the Rat whispered to him, “Never mind; don’t take any notice; and don’t say anything to him just yet.

He’s always rather low and despondent when he’s wanting his victuals. In half an hour’s time he’ll be quite a different animal.

”

When he saw that he had secured their attention, and that they were evidently waiting for him to address them, he turned back to the table again and reached out for the cheese.

And so great was the respect commanded by the solid qualities of that admirable animal, that not another word was uttered, until he had quite finished his repast and brushed the crumbs from his knees.

The Toad fidgeted a good deal, but the Rat held him firmly down.

Toad sat up slowly and dried his eyes.

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.

“There—is—an—underground—passage,” said the Badger, impressively, “that leads from the riverbank, quite near here, right up into the middle of Toad Hall.”

“Mole,” said the Badger, in his dry, quiet way, “

I perceive you have more sense in your little finger than some other animals have in the whole of their fat bodies.

You have managed excellently, and I begin to have great hopes of you. Good Mole! Clever Mole!”

The Mole was a good listener, and Toad, with no one to check his statements or to criticise 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?