The word "feral" has a kind of magic potency which allied itself to two other words, "ferocious" and "free." To revert to a feral state!

Life is too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds

Dogs, like very small children, are quite mad.

She hardly ever thought of him. He had worn a place for himself in some corner of her heart, as a sea shell, always boring against the rock, might do. The making of the place had been her pain. But now the shell was safely in the rock. It was lodged, and ground no longer.

He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him, but the ones who went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He had the glee of the porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas.

Only fools want to be great.

The fate of this man or that man was less than a drop, although it was a sparkling one, in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea.