Top 120 Kenneth Grahame Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Kenneth Grahame

2. “The strongest human instinct is to impart information, the second strongest is to resist it.”

— Kenneth Grahame

3. “The clever men of Oxford, know all that there is to be knowed but they none of them know one half as much as intelligent Mr. Toad.”

— Kenneth Grahame

4. “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

5. “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

Featured in: Strong Quotes

6. “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

7. “The past was like a bad dream; the future was all happy holiday as I moved Southwards week by week, easily, lazily, lingering as long as I dared, but always heeding the call!”

— Kenneth Grahame

8. “Good, bad, and indifferent – It takes all sorts to make a world.”

— Kenneth Grahame

9. “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

10. “You are brave! For my sake, do not be rash!”

— Kenneth Grahame

11. “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

12. “Footprints in the snow have been unfailing provokers of sentiment ever since snow was first a white wonder in this drab-coloured world of ours.”

— Kenneth Grahame

13. “Take the Adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes!”

— Kenneth Grahame

14. “There was the noise of a bolt shot back, and the door opened a few inches, enough to show a long snout and a pair of sleepy blinking eyes.”

— Kenneth Grahame

15. “An errant May-fly swerved unsteadily athwart the current in the intoxicated fashion affected by young bloods of May-flies seeing life. A swirl of water and a ‘cloop!’ and the May-fly was visible no more.”

— Kenneth Grahame

16. “The moon, serene and detached in a cloudless sky, did what she could, though so far off, to help them in their quest; till her hour came and she sank earthwards reluctantly, and left them, and mystery once more held field and river.”

— Kenneth Grahame

17. “Brain against brute force – and brain came out on the top – as its bound to do.”

— Kenneth Grahame

18. “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

19. “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

20. “Once well underground, you know exactly where you are. Nothing can happen to you, and nothing can get at you. You’re entirely your own master and you don’t have to consult anybody or mind what they say. Things go on all the same overhead, and you let ’em, and don’t bother about ’em. When you want to, up you go, and there the things are, waiting for you.”

— Kenneth Grahame

21. “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing’ he went on dreamily: ’messing – in – boats; messing.”

— Kenneth Grahame

22. “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

23. “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

24. “Well, well, perhaps I am a bit of a talker. A popular fellow such as I am – my friends get round me – we chaff, we sparkle, we tell witty stories – and somehow my tongue gets wagging. I have the gift of conversation. I’ve been told I ought to have a salon, whatever that may be.”

— Kenneth Grahame

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

25. “Monkeys who very sensibly refrain from speech, lest they should be set to earn their livings.”

— Kenneth Grahame

26. “Onion sauce! Onion Sauce!”

— Kenneth Grahame

27. “Weasels – and stoats – and foxes – and so on. They’re all right in a way – I’m very good friends with them – pass the time of day when we meet, and all that – but they break out sometimes, there’s no denying it, and then – well, you can’t really trust them, and that’s the fact.”

— Kenneth Grahame

28. “For this is the last best gift that the kindly demi-god 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.”

— Kenneth Grahame

29. “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.”

— Kenneth Grahame

30. “So beautiful and strange and new! Since it was to end so soon, I almost wish I had never heard it. For it has roused a longing in me that is pain, and nothing seems worth while but just to hear that sound once more and go on listening to it for ever.”

— Kenneth Grahame

31. “The Rat, meanwhile, was busy examining the label on one of the beer-bottles. “I perceive this to be Old Burton,” he remarked approvingly. “Sensible Mole! The very thing! Now we shall be able to mull some ale. Get the things ready, Mole, while I draw the corks.””

— Kenneth Grahame

32. “This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me,’ whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. ‘Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely.”

— Kenneth Grahame

33. “It’s not the sort of night for bed, anyhow.”

— Kenneth Grahame

34. “O what a flowery track lies spread before me, henceforth! What dust clouds shall spring up behind me as I speed on my reckless way! What carts I shall fling carelessly into the ditch in the wake of my magnificent onset!”

— Kenneth Grahame

35. “I’m such a clever Toad.”

— Kenneth Grahame

36. “I wonder,’ he said to himself presently, ‘I wonder if this sort of car STARTS easily?’ Next moment, hardly knowing how it.”

— Kenneth Grahame

37. “Badger hates Society, and invitations, and dinner, and all that sort of thing.”

— Kenneth Grahame

38. “A hundred bloodthirsty badgers, armed with rifles, are going to attack Toad Hall this very night, by way of the paddock. Six boatloads of Rats, with pistols and cutlasses, will come up the river and effect a landing in the garden; while a picked body of Toads, known as the Die-hards, or the Death-or-Glory Toads, will storm the orchard and carry everything before them, yelling for vengeance.”

— Kenneth Grahame

39. “Thank you kindly, dear Mole, for all your pains and trouble tonight, and especially for your cleverness this morning!’ The.”

— Kenneth Grahame

40. “Independence is all very well, but we animals never allow our friends to make fools of themselves beyond a certain limit; and that limit you’ve reached.”

— Kenneth Grahame

41. “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. ‘Rat!’ he found breath to whisper, shaking. ‘Are you afraid?’ ‘Afraid?’ murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. ‘Afraid! Of HIM? O, never, never! And yet – and yet – O, Mole, I am afraid!’ Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship.”

— Kenneth Grahame

42. “At last they heard the sound of slow shuffling footsteps approaching the door from the inside. It seemed, as the Mole remarked to the Rat, like some one walking in carpet slippers that were too large for him and down at heel; which was intelligent of Mole, because that was exactly what it was.”

— Kenneth Grahame

43. “As a rule, indeed, grown-up people are fairly correct on matters of fact; it is in the higher gift of imagination that they are so sadly to seek.”

— Kenneth Grahame

44. “Secrets had an immense attraction to 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.”

— Kenneth Grahame

45. “Children are the only people who accept a mood of wonderment, who are ready to welcome a perfect miracle at any hour of the day or night. Only a child can entertain an angel unawares, or to meet Sir Launcelot in shining armor on a moonlit road.”

— Kenneth Grahame

46. “Toad talked big about all he was going to do in the days to come, while stars grew fuller and larger all around them, and a yellow moon, appearing suddenly and silently from nowhere in particular, came to keep them company and listen to their talk.”

— Kenneth Grahame

47. “This is fine!” he said to himself. “This is better than whitewashing!”

— Kenneth Grahame

48. “The Mole recollected that animal-etiquette forbade any sort of comment on the sudden disappearance of one’s friends at any moment, for any reason or no reason whatever.”

— Kenneth Grahame

49. “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

50. “Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World,’ said the Rat. ‘And that’s something that doesn’t matter, either to you or me.”

— Kenneth Grahame