For a while she considered being ill, but she changed her mind.

The thing about God, she thought, is that He usually does help, but not until you've made an effort on your own.

Everything's much too big here,' thought Moominmamma. 'Or perhaps I'm too small.

It's a funny thing about bogs. You can fill them with rocks and sand and old logs and make a little fenced-in yard on top with a woodpile and chopping block - but bogs go right on behaving like bogs. Early in the spring they breathe ice and make their own mist, in remembrance of the time when they had black water and their own sedge blossoming untouched.

There are such a lot of things that have no place in summer and autumn and spring. Everything that’s a little shy and a little rum. Some kinds of night animals and people that don’t fit in with others and that nobody really believes in. They keep out of the way all the year. And then when everything’s quiet and white and the nights are long and most people are asleep—then they appear.

But he thought all the strange words were beautiful, and he had never had a book of his own before.

You must go on a long journey before you can really find out how wonderful home is.