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 s… - Kenneth Grahame

No, I can't stop for sonnets; my mother is sitting up. I'll look you up tomorrow, sometime or other, and do for goodness' sake try and realise that you're a pestilential scourge, or your find yourself in a most awful fix. Good-night!

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.

"This is fine!" he said to himself. "This is better than whitewashing!"