Arthur Ransome Quotes

BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN

— Arthur Ransome

“You write not for children but for yourself. And if by good fortune children enjoy what you enjoy, why then you are a writer of children's books.”

— Arthur Ransome

“Who would wave a flag to be rescued if they had a desert island of their own? That was the thing that spoilt Robinson Crusoe. In the end he came home. There never ought to be an end.”

— Arthur Ransome

“Swallows and Amazons for-ever!”

— Arthur Ransome

“The island had come to seem one of those places seen from the train that belong to a life in which we shall never take part.”

— Arthur Ransome

“Grab a chance and you won't be sorry for what might have been”

— Arthur Ransome

“They found, like many explorers before them, that somehow, in their absence, they had got into trouble at home.”

— Arthur Ransome

“The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thenceforward with a single anchorage.
The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting place.”

— Arthur Ransome

“But the big hills up at the lake helped to make him feel that the houseboat man did not matter. The hills had been there before Captain Flint. They would be there for ever. That, somehow was comforting.”

— Arthur Ransome

“When a thing's done, it's done, and if it's not done right, do it differently next time.”

— Arthur Ransome

“There are two distinct visits to tackle-shops, the visit to buy tackle and the visit which may be described as Platonic when, being for some reason unable to fish, we look for an excuse to go in, and waste the tackle dealer's time.”

— Arthur Ransome

“Fishing books , lit by emotion recollected in tranquility, are like poetry.. We do not think of them as books but as men. They are our companions and not only riverside. Summer and winter they are with us and what a pleasant company they are.”

— Arthur Ransome

“Perhaps the greatest satisfaction on the first day of the season is the knowledge in the evening that the whole of the rest of the season is to come.”

— Arthur Ransome

“For at least the last 275 years the honesty of fishermen has been somewhat questionable. It should be noted that Izaak Walton whose book published in 1653 spoke not of anglers and , but anglers OR very honest men .”

— Arthur Ransome

“Good fishermen know that in talking about fishing, nothing is more interesting than the truth.”

— Arthur Ransome

“Next to the pleasure of reading a favourite fishing book comes that of persuading a friend to read it too.”

— Arthur Ransome

“I fished a little while ago with a man, not in his first youth, who had wasted the flower of his life on business and golf and gardening and motoring and marriage, and had in this way postponed his initiation (to fly fishing) far too long.”

— Arthur Ransome

“Fishing is not like billiards, in which it is possible to attain a disgusting perfection.”

— Arthur Ransome