“Though the birds scolded, the foxes snarled, and his own kind drove him away, Tarka had many friends, whom he played with and forgot – sticks, stones, water-weeds, slain fish, and once an empty cocoa-tin, a bright and curious thing that talked strangely as it moved over the shallows, but sank into the pool beyond, sent up three bubbles, and would play no more.” PlayFriendsContentmentOtters Book:Tarka the Otter Source: Tarka the Otter
“Hu-ee-ic! The sky was growing grey. Tarka could not catch a carp, and he was hungry. He went back to the brook. Hu-ee-ic! Only his echo replied, and he wandered on.” Loneliness Book:Tarka the Otter Source: Tarka the Otter
“The icy casings of leaves and grasses and blades and sprigs were glowing and hid in a mist of sun-fire. Moor-folk call this morning glory Ammil.” Beautiful Book:Tarka the Otter Source: Tarka the Otter
“For within himself, be he clairvoyant and articulate, he will find latent the divisions of the mind of European man, and their opposing impulses.” VenusHitlerLuciferMorning StarMiguel SerranoHenry WilliamsonTarkaTarka The Otter Book:Lucifer Before Sunrise Source: Lucifer Before Sunrise
“Such was life; everything passed away; the fields and woodlands of boyhood became built upon; streets and pavements and lamp posts arose where warblers and willow wrens had sung; nothing ever remained the same.” ProgressEcologyUrbanisation Book:The Golden Virgin Source: The Golden Virgin
“The tarn is deep and brown and still, reflecting rushes and reeds at its sides, the sedges of the hills, and the sky over them.” ReedsRushesTarn Book:Tarka the Otter Source: Tarka the Otter
“The first otter to go into deep water had felt the same fear that Tarka felt that night; for his ancestors, thousands of years ago, had been hunters in woods and along the banks of rivers, running the scent of blooded creatures on the earth, like all the members of the weasel race to which they belonged. This race had several tribes in the country of the Two Rivers. Biggest were the brocks, a tribe of badgers who lived in holts scratched among the roots of trees and bushes, and rarely went to water except to drink. They were related to the fitches or stoats, who chased rabbits and jumped upon birds on the earth; and to the vairs or weasels, who sucked the blood of mice and dragged fledgelings from the nest; and to the grey fitches or polecats, so rare in the forests; and to the pine-martens, a tribe so harried by men that one only remained, and he had found sanctuary in a wood where a gin was never tilled and a gun was never fired, where the red deer was never roused and the fox never chased. He was old; his canine teeth worn down. Otters knew the ponds in this wood and they played in them by day, while herons stalked in the shallows and nothing feared the old lady who sometimes sat on the bank, watching the wild creatures which she thought of as the small and persecuted kinsfolk of man.” NatureAnimalOtter Book:Tarka the Otter Source: Tarka the Otter