One does not argue about The Wind in the Willows.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that certain stories, like 'The Wind in the Willows,' stand on their own merit and evoke strong feelings that are beyond argument.
A. A. Milne's quote highlights the intrinsic value of classic literature, specifically 'The Wind in the Willows.' It implies that the emotional and aesthetic experience offered by such works is profound and universally understood, making it futile to debate their significance or quality. Instead, readers are encouraged to embrace the feelings and memories these stories invoke.
In practice
In a book club discussion, one might reference Milne's quote when sharing their love for classic adaptations.
And how are you?" said Winnie-the-Pooh. Eeyore shook his head from side to side. "Not very how," he said. "I don't seem to have felt at all how for a long time." "Dear, dear," said Pooh, "I'm sorry about that. Let's have a look at you.
Piglet was so excited at the idea of being Useful that he forgot to be frightened any more, and when Rabbit went on to say that Kangas were only Fierce during the winter months, being at other times of an Affectionate Disposition, he could hardly sit still, he was so eager to begin being useful at once.
Time is swift, it races by; Opportunities are born and die... Still you wait and will not try - A bird with wings who dares not rise and fly.
Did I miss?" you asked. "You didn't exactly miss," said Pooh, "But you missed the balloon." "I'm so sorry," you said, and you fired again, and this time you hit the balloon and the air came slowly out, and Winnie-the-Pooh floated down to the ground.
Come, come, come. Without a monster or two it's not a quest, merely a gaggle of friends wandering about.
Friendship," said Christopher Robin, "is a very comforting thing to have.
We all fear loneliness, madness, dying. Shakespeare and Walt Whitman, Leopardi and Hart Crane will not cure those fears. And yet these poets bring us fire and light.
We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.
Most contemporary novels are not really "written." They obtain what reality they have largely from an accurate rendering of the noises that human beings currently make in their daily simple needs of communication; and what part of a novel is not composed of these noises consists of a prose which is no more alive than that of a competent newspaper writer or government official. A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel-reader is not prepared to give.
After I had my son I looked everywhere for a book that might serve as some kind of mirror. I bought so many silly books. Now I see what the problem was: I wanted a book about time-about mortality. I can't think of a writer who is at once so experimentally daring and so rigorously uncompromising as Sarah Manguso. Ongoingness is an incredibly elegant, wise book, and I loved it.
All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.
Every word a woman writes changes the story of the world, revises the official version.
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