Ransome Quotes & Sayings

Thought of blowing your brains out?"
William blinked, startled.
"No."
"That's good. Anything else is bound to be an improvement, isn't it? — Diana Gabaldon

Only, the beastly Arctic won't freeze, — Arthur Ransome

Swallows and Amazons for-ever! — Arthur Ransome

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

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. — Arthur Ransome

My parents were wonderful people, but there were terrible rows between them, and at times I found the atmosphere at home unbearable. The Arthur Ransome books gave me an alternative childhood and the tools to escape. — Michelle Magorian

What's hit's history: what's missed's mystery. — 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

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

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

Grab a chance and you won't be sorry for what might have been — Arthur Ransome

His mother and father were agnostics, and Jim respected devout Christians in the same way that he respected people who were members of the Graf Zeppelin Club or shopped at the Chinese department stores, for their mastery of an exotic foreign ritual. Besides, those who worked hardest for others, like Mrs. Philips and Mrs. Gilmour and Dr. Ransome, often held beliefs that turned out to be correct. — J.G. Ballard

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

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

BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN — 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

The siren heralds a friend, the bee a stranger. — Hilda M. Ransome

Dr. Ransome marked the exercises in the algebra textbook and gave him two strips of rice-paper bandage on which to solve the simultaneous equations. As he stood up, Dr. Ransome removed the three tomatoes from Jim's pocket. He laid them on the table by the wax tray.
'Did they come from the hospital garden?'
'Yes.' Jim gazed back frankly at Dr. Ransome. Recently he had begun to see him with a more adult eye. The long years of imprisonment, the constant disputes with the Japanese had made this young physician seem middle-aged. Dr. Ransome was often unsure of himself, as he was of Jim's theft.
'I have to give Basie something whenever I see him.'
'I know. It's a good thing that you're friends with Basie. He's a survivor, though survivors can be dangerous. Wars exist for people like Basie.' Dr. Ransome placed the tomatoes in Jim's hand. 'I want you to eat them, Jim. I'll get you something for Basie. — J.G. Ballard

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. — Arthur Ransome

A pigeon a day keeps the natives away. — 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

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

Lady Gregory, in a note to her play Aristotle's Bellows, writes:
Aristotle's name is a part of our folklore. The wife of one of our labourers told me one day as a bee buzzed through the open door, Aristotle of the Books was very wise, but the bees got the best of him in the end. He wanted to know how they did pack the comb, and he wasted the best part of a fortnight watching them doing it. Then he made a hive with a glass cover on it and put it over them, and thought he would watch them, but when he put his eye to the glass, they had covered it with wax, so that it was as black as the pot, and he was as blind as before. He said he was never rightly killed until then. The bees beat him that time surely. — Hilda M. Ransome

He wiped the sweat from his face on his sleeve, squared his shoulders, and strode back into the fray. All there was to do was his duty. — Diana Gabaldon

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. — Arthur Ransome

When my younger son was 13 years old, he asked me to read 'Swallows and Amazons' to him while he made models. He liked it so much that I ended up reading all thirteen of Ransome's books, including the ones that I missed out on. This led my son to 'Treasure Island,' 'Robinson Crusoe' and 'Coral Island.' — Michelle Magorian

William Ransome and Cora Seaborne, stripped of code and convention, even of speech, stood with her strong hand in his: children of the earth lost in wonder. — Sarah Perry

Droughts especially appear to have accompanied the spirits of the dead in bee-form, and for this reason the honey offering was almost always customary in rain-magic, and the power of predicting rain was attributed to the bee. — Hilda M. 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

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

they would soon be old enough to read The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit and Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome, and eventually Iris Murdoch and Alan Bennett. They could all be readers, and maybe even uncommon ones. — Will Schwalbe

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

The storm came pretty soon," said John. "They won't have got much further before it caught them. We may find them any minute. They'll have got off the ice the moment the snow began."
"If only they had sense," said Susan. "But they haven't got any, not that sort. People oughtn't to be allowed to be brought up in towns. — Arthur Ransome

...(he) had his own set of rules: "ride clean and ride fair." Asked by reporters how he managed to keep calm despite the attacks by other cyclists, Marshall answered, "I simply ride away. — Lesa Cline-Ransome

No one wants to row who has ever sailed. — Arthur Ransome

Malachi Smith. Crispin Jones. Suzette Boudrot. Claude Le Breton." Matthew paused as Ransome searched the ledger's entries for the names. "You should have kept them in chronological order instead of alphabetical. That's how I remember them." Ransome — Deborah Harkness

Good fishermen know that in talking about fishing, nothing is more interesting than the truth. — Arthur Ransome

There's something nice about out-and-out children's books with no sex and a happy ending - Ransome, Streatfeild, that kind of thing. — Jo Walton

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

Are ye all right, man? Ian asked, in the same tone of mild concern he'd heard his da use now and then on his mam or Uncle Jamie. Evidently it was in fact the right tone to take with a Fraser about to go berserk, for William breathed like a grampus for a moment or two, then got himself under control. — Diana Gabaldon