46
" 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. "
― Kenneth Grahame , The Wind in the Willows
56
" As he hurried along, eagerly anticipating the moment when he would be at home again among the things he knew and liked, the Mole saw clearly that he was an animal of tilled field and hedgerow, linked to the ploughed furrow, the frequented pasture, the lane of evening lingerings, the cultivated garden-plot. For others the asperities, the stubborn endurance, or the clash of actual conflict, that went with Nature in the rough; he must be wise, must keep to the pleasant places in which his lines were laid and which held adventure enough, in their way, to last for a lifetime. "
― Kenneth Grahame , The Wind in the Willows