All the world will be your enemy, Prince of a Thousand enemies. And when they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you; digger, listener, runner, Prince with the swift warning. Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed.
Richard AdamsI certainly think that 10 to 20 years from now, clearly the majority of veterinarians will be women.
Richard AdamsYou know how you let yourself think that everything will be all right if you can only get to a certain place or do a certain thing. But when you get there you find it's not that simple.
Richard AdamsLike the pain of a bad wound, the effect of a deep shock takes some while to be felt. When a child is told, for the first time in his life, that a person he has known is dead, although he does not disbelieve it, he may well fail to comprehend it and later ask--perhaps more than once--where the dead person is and when he is coming back.
Richard AdamsPeople 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 AdamsWe are all human and fall short of where we need to be. We must never stop trying to be the best we can be.
Richard AdamsRabbits (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.
Richard AdamsI've always said that Watership Down is not a book for children. I say: it's a book, and anyone who wants to read it can read it.
Richard AdamsI have learned that with creatures one loves, suffering is not the only thing for which one may pity them. A rabbit who does not know when a gift has made him safe is poorer than a slug, even though he may think otherwise himself.
Richard AdamsTo 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 AdamsAt 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 AdamsThere 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 AdamsRabbits live close to death and when death comes closer than usual, thinking about survival leaves little room for anything else.
Richard AdamsIf a rabbit gave advice and the advice wasn't accepted, he immediately forgot it, and so did everyone else.
Richard AdamsI 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 AdamsWhen the man was disgraced and told to go away, he was allowed to ask all the animals whether any of them would come with him and share his fortunes and his life. There were only two who agreed to come entirely of their own accord, and they were the dog and the cat. And ever since then, those two have been jealous of each other, and each is for ever trying to make man choose which one he likes best. Every man prefers one or the other.
Richard AdamsHow 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