“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.”

“Everything seems asleep, and yet going on all the time. It is a goodlylife that you lead, friend; no doubt the best in the world, if only you arestrong enough to lead it!”

“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.”

“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!”

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

“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.”

“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.”