Quotes from Richard Adams

I tell you, every single thing that's happened fits like a bee in a foxglove.

Who knows why men do anything?

I don't like straight lines: men make them.

Our children's children will hear a good story.

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.

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever 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 shall never be destroyed.

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.

My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.

Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it.

You 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.

He fought because he actually felt safer fighting than running.

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

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.

A thing can be true and still be desperate folly, Hazel.

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.

Like 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.

We all have to meet our match sometime or other.

You're trying to eat grass that isn't there. Why don't you give it a chance to grow?

Human beings say, "It never rains but it pours." This is not very apt, for it frequently does rain without pouring. The rabbits' proverb is better expressed. They say, "One cloud feels lonely": and indeed it is true that the sky will soon be overcast.

Men will never rest till they've spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals.

Rabbit underground, rabbit safe and sound.

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

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.

Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed.