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

Grab a chance and you won't be sorry for a might-have-been.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Swallows and Amazons for-ever!