Top 120 Richard Adams Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Here is a boy who was waiting to be punished. But then, unexpectedly, he finds that his fault has been overlooked or forgiven and at once the world reappears in brilliant colors, full of delightful prospects. Here is a soldier who was waiting, with a heavy heart, to suffer and die in battle. But suddenly the luck has changed. There is news! The war is over and everyone bursts out singing! He will go home after all!”

— Richard Adams

102. “All was confusion, ignorance, clambering and exhaustion.”

— Richard Adams

103. “It was not long before Fiver found what they were looking for.”

— Richard Adams

104. “Well, there’s another place – another country, isn’t there? We go there when we sleep; at other times, too; and when we die.”

— Richard Adams

105. “Oh, Frith in a barn! What a business!”

— Richard Adams

106. “Are you trying to frighten me, you miserable little lump of chattering chickweed?”

— Richard Adams

107. “You would be stealing the clouds out of the sky before the moon had changed twice.”

— Richard Adams

108. “There is a rabbit saying, “In the warren, more stories than passages”; and a rabbit can no more refuse to tell a story than an Irishman can refuse to fight.”

— Richard Adams

109. “There is nothing like bad weather to reveal the shortcomings of a dwelling, particularly if it is too small. You are, as they say, stuck with it and have leisure to feel all its peculiar irritations and discomforts.”

— Richard Adams

110. “My courage – my spirit: it’s so much less than it was. I’m afraid to let you rely on me.”

— Richard Adams

111. “The fact that there was a warren two or three days’ journey to the south flickered and oscillated down among them as a penny wavers down through deep water, moving one way and the other, shifting, vanishing, reappearing, but always sinking towards the firm bottom.”

— Richard Adams

112. “Those are rabbits down there, trotting along like a lot of squirrels with nuts. How can that be right?”

— Richard Adams

113. “I feel as dry and empty as an autumn puffball – I feel as though the wind could blow my fur away.”

— Richard Adams

114. “My goodness, we’ve learned a few things since we left the old warren, haven’t we? More than we’ve learned in a lifetime back there. And digging! It’ll be flying next.”

— Richard Adams

115. “How was one to foresee and guard against everything?”

— Richard Adams

116. “The white petals spun down around them, covering the grass and speckling their fur, while thirty feet above a thrush sang, “Cherry dew, cherry dew. Knee deep, knee deep, knee deep.”

— Richard Adams

117. “I’m the one who ought to get angry,” said Fiver. “But I’m no good at it, that’s the trouble.”

— Richard Adams

118. “Sometimes I can tell these things, too: but not often now for my hearts is in the frost.”

— Richard Adams

119. “For birds and animals, as for poor men, winter is another matter.”

— Richard Adams

120. “El-arairah is a trickster,” said Buckthorn. “And rabbits will always need tricks.”

— Richard Adams

121. “But all this time, just as a drop of water slowly swells until it is heavy enough to fall from a twig, the idea of what they meant to do was becoming clear and unanimous.”

— Richard Adams

122. “It’s time people started thinking of Man as one of a number of species inhabiting the planet; and if he’s the cleverest, that merely gives him more responsibility for seeing that the rest can lead proper, natural lives under minimum control.”

— Richard Adams

123. “I tell you, every single thing that’s happened fits like a bee in a foxglove.”

— Richard Adams

124. “I am the Fairy Wogdog, messenger of the great dog spirit of the East, Queen Dripslobber. Far, far in the East her palace lies! Ah, Rowsby Woof, if only you could see her mighty state, the wonders of her kingdom! The carrion that lies far and wide upon the sands! The manure, Rowsby Woof! The open sewers! Oh how you would jump for joy and run nosing all about!”

— Richard Adams

125. “Well, there’s another place, another country, isn’t there? We go there when we sleep; at other times, too; and when we die. El-ahrairah comes and goes between the two as he wants, I suppose, but I could never quite make that out, from the tales. Some rabbits will tell you it’s all easy there, compared with the waking dangers that they understand. But I think that only shows they don’t know much about it. It’s a wild place, and very unsafe. And where are we really- there or here?”

— Richard Adams

126. “You wretched black beetle!”

— Richard Adams

127. “That warren’s tharn as an owl in daylight.”

— Richard Adams

128. “And now, you bunch of mole-snouted, muck-raking, hutch-hearted sheep ticks, get out of my sight sharp.”

— Richard Adams

129. “It’s a bad world for animals.”

— Richard Adams