Kenneth Grahame

In or out of ’em, it doesn’t mat­ter. 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.

“Once, it was noth­ing but sail­ing,” said the Rat. “Then he tired of that and took to punt­ing. Noth­ing would please him but to punt all day and every day, and a nice mess he made of it. Last year it was house­boat­ing, and we all had to go and stay with him in his house­boat, and pre­tend we liked it. He was go­ing to spend the rest of his life in a house­boat. It’s all the same, whatever he takes up; he gets tired of it, and starts on some­thing fresh.”

But the Mole was very full of lunch, and self-sat­is­fac­tion, and pride

dis­con­tent

“Hang spring-clean­ing!”

I The River Bank

pen­et­rat­ing

mut­ter­ing

spirit of di­vine dis­con­tent and long­ing