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

Categorized in : Memories Heart Clouds

I 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 Adams

suffering rabbits thinking

We 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 Adams

trying fall needs

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

size strange cutting

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 Adams

warning people enemy

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.

Richard Adams

certain simple thinking

We all have to meet our match sometime or other.

Richard Adams

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.

Richard Adams

loss animal past

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

flower sky two

When 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 Adams

jealous cat dog

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

Richard Adams

earth animal men

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.

Richard Adams

pain doe children

I'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 Adams

want book children

A thing can be true and still be desperate folly.

Richard Adams

desperate being-true folly

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

Richard Adams

cunning tricks people

If a rabbit gave advice and the advice wasn't accepted, he immediately forgot it, and so did everyone else.

Richard Adams

accepted rabbits advice

Rabbits live close to death and when death comes closer than usual, thinking about survival leaves little room for anything else.

Richard Adams

survival usual thinking

One cloud feels lonely.

Richard Adams

feeling-lonely lonely clouds

Our children's children will hear a good story.

Richard Adams

our-children stories children

They're all so much afraid of the Council that they're not afraid of anything else.

Richard Adams

council not-afraid fear

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.

Richard Adams

garden men way