The Wind in the Willows

Kenneth Grahame’s novel of the Mole, who leaves his spring-cleaning for the river bank and makes friends with the Water Rat, the gruff Badger and the conceited, motor-car-mad Toad of Toad Hall.

Start reading12 chapters, about 60,000 words

Famous quotes

• The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.

  Chapter IIn context

  • Work

• 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.

  Chapter IIn context

  • Nature

• Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing⁠—absolute nothing⁠—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.

  Chapter IIn context

  • Advice
  • Happiness

• All along the backwater,
  Through the rushes tall,
  Ducks are a-dabbling,
  Up tails all!

  Chapter IIIn context

  • Animals
  • Poetry

• “People come⁠—they stay for a while, they flourish, they build⁠—and they go. It is their way. But we remain. There were badgers here, I’ve been told, long before that same city ever came to be. And now there are badgers here again. We are an enduring lot, and we may move out for a time, but we wait, and are patient, and back we come. And so it will ever be.”

  Chapter IVIn context

  • Animals
  • History
  • Time

• It takes all sorts to make a world.

  Chapter IVIn context

  • Character

• There he got out the luncheon-basket and packed a simple meal, in which, remembering the stranger’s origin and preferences, he took care to include a yard of long French bread, a sausage out of which the garlic sang, some cheese which lay down and cried, and a long-necked straw-covered flask wherein lay bottled sunshine shed and garnered on far Southern slopes.

  Chapter IXIn context

  • Food

• The world has held great Heroes,
  As history-books have showed;
  But never a name to go down to fame
  Compared with that of Toad!

  Chapter XIn context

  • Comedy
  • Pride

Contents

1. Chapter IThe River Bank
2. Chapter IIThe Open Road
3. Chapter IIIThe Wild Wood
4. Chapter IVMr. Badger
5. Chapter VDulce Domum
6. Chapter VIMr. Toad
7. Chapter VIIThe Piper at the Gates of Dawn
8. Chapter VIIIToad’s Adventures
9. Chapter IXWayfarers All
10. Chapter XThe Further Adventures of Toad
11. Chapter XI“Like Summer Tempests Came His Tears”
12. Chapter XIIThe Return of Ulysses