Richard Adams quotes: top famous quotes and sayings by Richard Adams

Top Richard Adams Quotes

Browse top 67 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Richard Adams.

Favorite Richard Adams Quotes

1. "Rabbits (says Mr. Lockley) are like human beings in many ways. One of these is certainly their staunch ability to withstand disaster and to let the stream of their life carry them along, past reaches of terror and loss. They have a certain quality which it would not be accurate to describe as callousness or indifference. It is, rather, a blessedly circumscribed imagination and an intuitive feeling that Life is Now. A foraging wild creature, intent above all upon survival, is as strong as the grass." ~ Richard Adams

2. "At that moment, in the sunset on Watership Down, there was offered to General Woundwort the opportunity to show whether he was really the leader of vision and genius which he believed himself to be, or whether he was no more than a tyrant with the courage and cunning of a pirate. For one beat of his pulse the lame rabbit's idea shone clearly before him. He grasped it and realized what it meant. The next, he had pushed it away from him." ~ Richard Adams

3. "A thing can be true and still be desperate folly, Hazel." ~ Richard Adams

4. "Animals don't behave like men,' he said. 'If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill they kill. But they don't sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures' lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality." ~ Richard Adams

5. "My Chief Rabbit has told me to stay and defend this run, and until he says otherwise, I shall stay here. --Bigwig" ~ Richard Adams

6. "There's terrible evil in the world."It comes from men," said Holly. "All other elil do what they have to do and Frith moves them as he moves us. They live on the earth and they need food. Men will never rest till they've spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals." ~ Richard Adams

7. "Silflay hraka, u embleer rah!" ~ Richard Adams

8. "Lots of little Bigwigs, Hazel! Think of that, and tremble!" ~ Richard Adams

9. "whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you" ~ Richard Adams

10. "To come to the end of a time of anxiety and fear! To feel the cloud that hung over us lift and disperse - that cloud that dulled the heart and made happiness no more than a memory! This at least is one joy that must have been known by almost every living creature." ~ Richard Adams

11. "They want to be natural, the anti-social little beasts. They just don't realize that everyone's good depends on everyone's cooperation." ~ Richard Adams

12. "The rabbits mingled naturally. They did not talk for talking's sake, in the artificial manner that human beings - and sometimes even their dogs and cats - do. But this did not mean that they were not communicating; merely that they were not communicating by talking." ~ Richard Adams

13. "Black Rabbit: Hazel... Hazel... you know me, don't you? Hazel: I don't know. [the apparition reveals himself to be the Black Rabbit, and Hazel gasps] Hazel: Yes, my lord. I know you. Black Rabbit: I've come to ask if you'd like to join my Owsla. We shall be glad to have you, and I know you'd like it. You've been feeling tired, haven't you? If you're ready, we might go along now. [Hazel looks at all the younger rabbits of Watership Down] Black Rabbit: You needn't worry about them. They'll be all right, and thousands like them. If you come along now, I'll show you what I mean." ~ Richard Adams

14. "For that matter, Odysseus himself might have borrowed a trick or two from the rabbit hero, for he is very old and was never at a loss for a trick to deceive his enemies." ~ Richard Adams

15. "Rabbit underground, rabbit safe and sound." ~ Richard Adams

16. "This was their way of honoring the dead. The story over, the demands of their own hard, rough lives began to re-assert themselves in their hearts, in their nerves, their blood and appetites. Would that the dead were not dead! But there is grass that must be eaten, pellets that must be chewed, hraka that must be passed, holes that must be dug, sleep that must be slept. Odysseus brings not one man to shore with him. Yet he sleeps sound beside Calypso and when he wakes thinks only of Penelope." ~ Richard Adams

17. "The thinker dies, but his thoughts are beyond the reach of destruction. Men are mortal; but ideas are immortal." ~ Richard Adams

18. "Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it." ~ Richard Adams

19. "My heart has joined the thousand, for my friend stopped running today." ~ Richard Adams

20. "The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief, which is at the heart of all popular religion, that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart." ~ Richard Adams

21. "I certainly think that 10 to 20 years from now, clearly the majority of veterinarians will be women." ~ Richard Adams

22. "Hazel, like nearly all wild animals, was unaccustomed to look up at the sky. What he thought of as the sky was the horizon, usually broken by trees and hedges." ~ Richard Adams

23. "How do they find out with the experiments?''...one way they can find out a whole lot is to make an animal ill and then try different ways to make it better until they find one that works.''But isn't that unkind to the animal?''Well, I suppose it is...but I mean, there isn't a dad anywhere who would hesitate, is there, if he knew it was going to make [his child] better? It's changed the whole world during the last hundred years, and that's no exaggeration." ~ Richard Adams

24. "Would that the dead were not dead! But there is grass that must be eaten, pellets that must be chewed, hraka that must be passed, holes that must be dug, sleep that must be slept." ~ Richard Adams

25. "No, no- the sky will grow dark, cold rain will fall and all trace of the right way will be blotted out. You will be all alone. And still you will have to go on. There will be ghosts in the dark and voices in the air, disgusting prophecies coming true I wouldn't wonder and absent faces present on every side, as the man said. And still you will have to go on. The last bridge will fall behind you and the last lights will go out, followed by the sun, the moon and the stars; and still you will have to go on. You will come to regions more desolate and wretched than you ever dreamed could exist, places of sorrow created entirely by that mean superstition which you yourself have put about for so long. But still you will have to go on" ~ Richard Adams

26. "Here is a boy who was waiting to be punished. But then, unexpectedly,he ¯nds that his fault has been overlooked or forgiven and at once the worldreappears in brilliant colors, full of delightful prospects. Here is a soldier whowas waiting, with a heavy heart, to su®er and die in battle. But suddenlythe luck has changed. There is news! The war is over and everyone burstsout singing! He will go home after all! The sparrows in the plowland werecrouching in terror of the kestrel. But she has gone; and they °y pell-mell upthe hedgerow, frisking, chattering and perching where they will." ~ Richard Adams

27. "Dangerous thing, a name. Someone might catch hold of you by it, mightn't they?" ~ Richard Adams

28. "My lord,' replied El-ahrairah, 'I have come to give you my life. My life for my people.'The Black Rabbit drew his claws along the floor.Bargains, bargains, El-ahrairah,' he said. 'There is not a day or a night but a doe offers her life for her kittens, or some honest captain of Owsla his life for his Chief Rabbit's. Sometimes it is taken, sometimes it is not. But there is no bargain, for here what is is what must be." ~ Richard Adams

29. "A magpie, seeing some light-colored object conspicuous on the empty slope, flew closer to look. but all that lay there was a splintered peg and a twisted length of wire." ~ Richard Adams

30. "It's the place that worries you," said Hazel. "I don't like it myself, but it won't go on forever." ~ Richard Adams

31. "I distinguish two types of human beings, Love people, who love the sky and the flowers, and Power People, who are essentially sold on naked power." ~ Richard Adams

32. "And, Freedom, was I free?" ~ Richard Adams

33. "People who record birdsong generally do it very early--before six o'clock--if they can. Soon after that, the invasion of distant noise in most woodland becomes too constant and too loud." ~ Richard Adams

34. "Bluebell: Please, sir, I'm only a little [car] and I've left all my petrol on the grass. So if you don't mind eating the grass, sir, while I give this lady a ride-Hazel: Bluebell, shut up!" ~ Richard Adams

35. "Like children in a dark room, like wayfarers passing a graveyard at night, the four men in the canoe filled the surrounding darkness with the fear from their own hearts." ~ Richard Adams

36. "Well,' replied Tony, 'I think [Christ's] line would be the same as it always has been - that [sex without marriage] is understandable and forgivable, but wrong to the extent that it's less than the best." ~ Richard Adams

37. "El-ahrairah, tu pueblo no puede gobernar el mundo porque yo no lo he dispuesto así. Todo el mundo será tu enemigo, Príncipe con Mil Enemigos, y te matarán si te alcanzan. Pero antes tendrán que atraparte, a ti, que cavas y escuchas y corres, príncipe con la alarma presta. Sé astuto e ingenioso y tu pueblo nunca será destruido." ~ Richard Adams

38. "I am sorry for you with all my heart. But you cannot blame us, for you came to kill us if you could." ~ Richard Adams

39. "The rabbits became strange in many ways, different from other rabbits. They knew well enough what was happening. But even to themselves they pretended that all was well, for the food was good, they were protected, they had nothing to fear but the one fear; and that struck here and there, never enough at a time to drive them away.They forgot the ways of wild rabbits. They forgot El-ahrairah, for what use had they for tricks and cunning, living in the enemy's warren and paying his price?" ~ Richard Adams

40. "Most of them had not understood Blackberry's discovery of the raft and at once forgot it." ~ Richard Adams

41. "If you want to bless me you can bless my bottom, for it is sticking out of the hole." ~ Richard Adams

42. "Why do the men come, do you suppose?" "Who knows why men do anything?" ~ Richard Adams

43. "When Marco Polo came at last to Cathay, seven hundred years ago, did he not feel--and did his heart not falter as he realized--that this great and splendid capital of an empire had had its being all the years of his life and far longer, and that he had been ignorant of it? That it was in need of nothing from him, from Venice, from Europe? That it was full of wonders beyond his understanding? That his arrival was a matter of no importance whatever? We know that he felt these things, and so has many a traveler in foreign parts who did not know what he was going to find. There is nothing that cuts you down to size like coming to some strange and marvelous place where no one even stops to notice that you stare about you." ~ Richard Adams

44. "Damos por sentada la luz del día. En cambio, la luz de la luna es otra cuestión. Es inconstante. La luna llena mengua y reaparece. Las nubes pueden oscurecerla hasta un punto que no pueden oscurecer la luz del día. El agua es necesaria para nosotros, pero una cascada no lo es. Y siempre que encontramos una cascada, no es sino algo superfluo, un bello ornamento. Necesitamos la luz del día, pero no la luz de la luna. Cuando llega, no cubre ninguna necesidad. Transforma. Cae sobre los márgenes y la hierba, separando una larga brizna de otra; convirtiendo un montón de hojas marrones y mates en innumerables y álgidos fragmentos; o iluminando las ramas húmedas como si la propia luz fuera dúctil. Sus largos rayos se derraman, blancos y afilados, entre los troncos de los árboles, y palidecen y retroceden al penetrar en la brumosa distancia de los bosques de hayas." ~ Richard Adams

45. "He was after a sensational story and this, of course, could not be constructed out of mere truth; not out of officially released truth, anyway. It was essential that the news-reading public should feel, first, that the community was in danger and secondly that people—well-off people, "official" people—who ought to have known better, were to blame for it." ~ Richard Adams

46. "A quick run past the rabbits' execution shed, a turn around the kittens' quicklime pit, a moment's hesitation beyond the monkeys' gas-chamber--and they are gone: ay, not so long ago these canines fled away into the storm. It would be pleasant to report that that night Dr. Boycott dreamt of many a woe, and all his whitecoat-men with shade and form of witch and demon and large coffin-worm were long be-nightmared. One might even have hoped to add that Tyson the old died palsy-twitched, with meagre face deform. But in fact--as will be seen--none of these things happened. Slowly the rain ceased, the grey rack blowing away and over Windermere as first light came creeping into the sky and the remaining inmates of Lawson Park woke to another day in the care and service of humanity." ~ Richard Adams

47. "I know. And we have no does--not one--and no does means no kittens and in a few years no warren."It may seem incredible that the rabbits had given no thought to so vital a matter. But men have made the same mistake more than once--left the whole business out of account, or been content to trust to luck and the fortune of war." ~ Richard Adams

48. "Quintilio guardava lontano, oltre il confine del terreno demaniale. Quattro miglia più a sud, all'orizzonte, si stagliava il profilo ondulato delle grandi colline. Sul punto più elevato, i faggi di Cottington's Clump si agitavano al vento che, lassù, tirava più robusto che in pianura fra le eriche.«Guarda!» disse d'un tratto Quintilio. «Eccolo là, Moscardo, il posto che fa per noi. Colline alte e solitarie, dove il vento porta con sé rumori lontani e la terra è asciutta come la paglia in un granaio. Là noi dovremo abitare. Là, bisogna che andiamo." ~ Richard Adams

49. "What is this stuff, do you know?" he asked. "No, I don't," said Hazel. "I've never seen it before." "There's a lot we don't know," said Blackberry. "About this place, I mean. The plants are new, the smells are new. We're going to need some new ideas ourselves." "Well, you're the fellow for ideas," said Hazel. "I never know anything until you tell me." ~ Richard Adams

50. "One cloud feels lonely." ~ Richard Adams

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