Quote#Homeland
The dreadful beast must be exterminated, the country-side must be…
Quote byKenneth Grahame · 1859–1932
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: The Reluctant Dragon.
English (original)
The dreadful beast must be exterminated, the country-side must be freed from this pest, this terror, this destroying scourge. The fact that not even a hen roost was the worse for the dragon's arrival wasn't allowed to have anything to do with it. He was a dragon, and he couldn't deny it, and if he didn't choose to behave as such that was his own lookout.
— Kenneth Grahame
More from Kenneth Grahame
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Look here, father, you know we've each of us got our line. You know about sheep, and weather, and things; I know about dragons.
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As a rule, indeed, grown-up people are fairly correct on matters of fact; it is in the higher gift of imagination that they are so sadly to seek.
Footprints in the snow have been unfailing provokers of sentiment ever since snow was first a white wonder in this drab-coloured world of ours.
The most modest and retiring dragon in the world, if he's as big as four cart-horses and covered with blue scales, cannot keep altogether out of the public view. And so in the village tavern of nights the fact that a real live dragon sat …