“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”

“There’s nothing––absolutely nothing––half so much worth doing as messing about in boats.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”