"Rabbits live close to death and when death comes closer than usual, thinking about survival leaves little room for anything else."
Quote collection
Richard Adams quotes (page 2 of 2)
31 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."
"Bluebell had been saying that he knew the men hated us for raiding their crops and gardens, and Toadflax answered, 'That wasn't why they destroyed the warren. It was just because we were in their way. They killed us to suit themselves."
"If you want to bless me you can bless my bottom, for it is sticking out of the hole."
"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."
"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."
"Dangerous thing, a name. Someone might catch hold of you by it, mightn't they?"
"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."
"Sooner or later, everyone has to meet his match."
"The Threarah doesn't like anything he hasn't thought of for himself."
"Who knows why men do anything?"