Arthur Ransome Quotes

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

to make the sail set properly you must pull the boom down. That'll take those cross wrinkles out." "Is that what those blocks (pulleys) are for hooked to a ring in the kelson close to where the mast is stepped? But they are all muddled up." "Isn't there another ring under the boom, close to the mast?" asked Queen Elizabeth. "Got it," said Captain John. "One block hooks to the ring under the boom, and one to the ring in the bottom of the boat, then it's as easy as anything to haul the boom down. How's that?" "The crinkles in the sail go up and down now, and not across," said Mate Susan. "That's right," said Queen Elizabeth. "The wind will flatten them out as soon as we start sailing.

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

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.

No one wants to row who has ever sailed.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Things might have been a lot worse. Don't you worry about it overmuch. When a thing's done, it's done, and if it's not done right, do it differently next time. Worrying never made a sailor.

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

Swallows and Amazons for-ever!

Only, the beastly Arctic won't freeze,

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 .

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.

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.

A pigeon a day keeps the natives away.

He ain't a Coot not really," said Bill. "He ain't got a head on him no better'n a squashed frog. I see him all right but he don't know nothing. Fishing he were on the gravel reach."
"Catching anything?" asked Pete, who, detective or no detective, was still a fisherman.
"Perch," said Bill.
"Oh, never mind the fish," said Dorothea. "Had any boats been cast off?"
"He tell me to keep my shadow off the water," said Bill. "So I creep up and give him one of my sandwiches and when I ask if any boats been cast off, why Tommy he say 'How do you know?' "
"Go on. Go on," said Dorothea, reaching out for one of the little black paper flags all ready on its pin.
"I say I don't know but I want to know and Tommy he say it weren't his fault and I say when were it and what boat and Tommy he said it were his Dad's row-boat and he give it Tommy to tie up and Tommy he tie it to a stick what broke and he have to go in swimming to catch it.