Top 120 Richard Adams Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Bigwig, as he had predicted, was getting his head bitten off.”

— Richard Adams

52. “Why should he think me cruel Or that he is betrayed? I’d have him love the thing that was Before the world was made. W. B. Yeats, A Woman Young and Old.”

— Richard Adams

53. “You may think it’s a wonderful thing to be saved by Lord Frith in his power. How many rabbits has that happened to, I wonder? But I tell you, it was far more frightening than being chased by the Efrafans.”

— Richard Adams

54. “He reached the top of the bank in a single, powerful leap. Hazel followed; and together they slipped away, running easily down through the wood, where the first primroses were beginning to bloom.”

— Richard Adams

55. “Watership Down is a real place, like all the places in the book. It lies in north Hampshire, about six miles southwest of Newbury and two miles west of Kingsclere.”

— Richard Adams

56. “If you want to bless me you can bless my bottom, for it is sticking out of the hole.”

— Richard Adams

57. “Stubbs may have envisaged the skeleton inside the horse, but most of us do not.”

— Richard Adams

58. “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

59. “I don’t know where ideas come from. They come from outer space or God, if you like, or from my subconscious mind. But I never go ou self-consciously looking for a story.”

— Richard Adams

60. “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

61. “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.”

— Richard Adams

62. “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

63. “Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it. For them there is no winter food problem. They have fires and warm clothes. The winter cannot hurt them and therefore increases their sense of cleverness and security. For birds and animals, as for poor men, winter is another matter. Rabbits, like most wild animals, suffer hardship.”

— Richard Adams

64. “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

65. “Thayli, you are very brave. Are you cunning, too?”

— Richard Adams

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

— Richard Adams

67. “Why do the men come, do you suppose?” asked Fiver. “Who knows why men do anything? They may drive cows or sheep in the fields, or cut wood in the copses. What does it matter? I’d rather dodge a man than a stoat or a fox.”

— Richard Adams

68. “But he – he hated pity as a cat hates water.”

— Richard Adams

69. “They’re all so much afraid of the Council that they’re not afraid of anything else.”

— Richard Adams

70. “I’m sick and tired of it,” he said, “It’s the same all the time. ‘These are my claws, so this is my cowslip.” ‘These are my teeth, so this is my burrow.’ I’ll tell you, if I ever get into the Owsla, I’ll treat outskirters with a bit of decency.”

— Richard Adams

71. “I certainly think that 10 to 20 years from now, clearly the majority of veterinarians will be women.”

— Richard Adams

72. “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

73. “He looked as though he knew how to take care of himself. There was a shrewd, buoyant air about him as he sat up, looked round and rubbed both front paws over his nose.”

— Richard Adams

74. “You have the power to bestow upon each one of us a life of beauty and abundance, and I truly thank you for your boundless generosity and kindness.”

— Richard Adams

75. “Why, all of you,” answered the other, surprised. “You don’t want to stay out in the rain, do you?”

— Richard Adams

76. “Personne n’abandonnera personne. Si tu restes, je reste avec toi.”

— Richard Adams

77. “Sheep used to have wings. One flew into the sky and all the others followed. They took their wings off while feeding in the warm sun but the wind blew away their wings so they couldn’t fly anymore. They had to return to earth by drifting to where the sky curves down and touches the land, and then walk round the long way... i like that...”

— Richard Adams

78. “Go,” said Hazel, firmly and quietly, “or we’ll kill you.”

— Richard Adams

79. “Hazel, watching, lent help here and there and encouraged the others.”

— Richard Adams

80. “You’ve bitten through a bigger peg than this one I’m dragging.”

— Richard Adams

81. “Can you run?” said Hazel. “I think not. Why you pop-eyed, back-door saucer-scraper –.”

— Richard Adams

82. “I dare say a good many... would have kept quiet and thought about keeping on the right side of the Chief, but I’m afraid I’m not much good at that.”

— Richard Adams

83. “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

84. “Now, Rowsby Woof was the man’s dog; and he was the most objectionable, malicious, disgusting brute that ever licked a man’s hand. He.”

— Richard Adams

85. “Plot as such is not a major ingredient in my novels... it’s often better to sail on the unconscious sea.”

— Richard Adams

86. “Rowf’s rump slid suddenly forward as smoothly as a turd from a healthy anus.”

— Richard Adams

87. “Now Bigwig’s put their backs up, and they’ll think they’ve got to go on because he makes them. I want them to go on because they can see it’s the only thing to do.”

— Richard Adams

88. “And at once he went on with his burden, as though afraid that he might already have said too much in this country where the past was sharp splinters embedded in men’s minds and an ill-judged word a false step in the dark.”

— Richard Adams

89. “Every length smells of rabbit – of that great, indestructible flood of Rabbitry in which each one is carried along, sure-footed and safe.”

— Richard Adams

90. “Oh, Fairy Wogdog!′ cried Rowsby Woof, dribbling and piddling all over the gravel. ‘Ah, what elegance! What aristocratic distinction! Can that really be decayed cat that I smell? With a delicate overtone of rotten camel! Ah, the gorgeous East!”

— Richard Adams

91. “It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought. J. K. GALBRAITH, The Affluent Society.”

— Richard Adams

92. “Racing through the ocher light, Bigwig was impelled by a frenzy of tension and energy. He did not feel the wound in his shoulder. The storm was his own. The storm would defeat Efrafa.”

— Richard Adams

93. “It’s like a great mist of folly that covers the whole sky: and we shall never see to go by Frith’s light any more. Oh, what will become of us? A thing can be true and still be desperate folly, Hazel.”

— Richard Adams

94. “Literal religion is full of pitfalls.”

— Richard Adams

95. “Rain before sunset and we’ll be in shelter.”

— Richard Adams

96. “When they got there, the first thing they saw was the man himself, with a white stick burning away in his mouth, cutting row after row of frosted cabbages. Rowsby Woof was with him, wagging his tail and jumping about in a ridiculous manner. After.”

— Richard Adams

97. “There’s terrible evil in the world. It comes from men,′ said Holly. ‘Men will never rest till they’ve spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals.”

— Richard Adams

98. “We take daylight for granted. But moonlight is another matter.”

— Richard Adams

99. “Rabbits above ground, unless they are in proved, familiar surroundings close to their holes, live in continual fear. If it grows intense enough they can become glazed and paralysed by it – tharn, to use their own word. – Richard Adams, Watership Down.”

— Richard Adams

100. “Think yourself lucky,” said Bigwig, bleeding and cursing, “that I don’t kill you.”

— Richard Adams