This is among my favorite quotes:
“‘…Here they stabled their horses and feasted, from here they rode out to fight or drove out to trade. They were a powerful people, and rich, and great builders. They built to last, for they thought their city would last for ever….
“… ‘People come — they stay for a while, they build — and they go. It is their way. But we remain. There were badgers here, I’ve been told, long before that same city ever came to be. And now there are badgers here again. We keep on going, and we may move out for a time, but we wait, and are patient, and back we come….'”
(From “Wind in the Willows,” Kenneth Grahame (1908))