02c. 1968 ADMy heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.Richard Adams / quote ↗
03c. 1968 ADLike 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 / quote ↗
04c. 1968 ADThere is not a day or night but a doe offers her life for her kittens, or some honest captain of Owsla his life for his Chief Rabbit's. Sometimes it is taken, sometimes it is not. But there is no bargain, for here, what is, is what must be.Richard Adams / quote ↗
05c. 1968 ADWould 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 / quote ↗
06c. 1968 ADThis 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. Odysseus brings not one man to shore with him. Yet he sleeps sound beside Calypso and when he wakes thinks only of Penelope.Richard Adams / quote ↗
07c. 1968 ADBargains, bargains, El-ahrairah," he said. "There is not a day or night but a doe offers her life for her kittens, or some honest captain of Owsla his life for his Chief Rabbit's. Sometimes it is taken, sometimes it is not. But there is no bargain, for here what is is what must be.Richard Adams / quote ↗
08c. 1968 ADThey're all so much afraid of the Council that they're not afraid of anything else.Richard Adams / quote ↗
09c. 1968 ADYou can't call your life your own: and in return you have safety, if it's worth having at the price you pay.Richard Adams / quote ↗
10c. 1968 ADAt 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 Adams / quote ↗
11c. 1968 ADI'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 / quote ↗
12c. 1968 ADYou know how you let yourself think that everything will be alright if you can only go to certain place or do a certain thing. But when you get there you find it's not that simple.Richard Adams / quote ↗
13c. 1968 ADMany human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it.Richard Adams / quote ↗
14c. 1968 ADHere is a boy who was waiting to be punished. But then, unexpectedly,he ¯nds that his fault has been overlooked or forgiven and at once the worldreappears in brilliant colors, full of delightful prospects. Here is a soldier whowas waiting, with a heavy heart, to su®er and die in battle. But suddenlythe luck has changed. There is news! The war is over and everyone burstsout singing! He will go home after all! The sparrows in the plowland werecrouching in terror of the kestrel. But she has gone; and they °y pell-mell upthe hedgerow, frisking, chattering and perching where they will.Richard Adams / quote ↗
15c. 1968 ADAnimals 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.Richard Adams / quote ↗
16c. 1968 ADBluebell 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 / quote ↗
17c. 1968 ADRabbits (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. A foraging wild creature, intent above all upon survival, is as strong as the grass.Richard Adams / quote ↗
18c. 1968 AD[One} 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 / quote ↗
19c. 1968 ADYou're trying to eat grass that isn't there. Why don't you give it a chance to grow?Richard Adams / quote ↗
20c. 1968 ADNo, no- the sky will grow dark, cold rain will fall and all trace of the right way will be blotted out. You will be all alone. And still you will have to go on. There will be ghosts in the dark and voices in the air, disgusting prophecies coming true I wouldn’t wonder and absent faces present on every side, as the man said. And still you will have to go on. The last bridge will fall behind you and the last lights will go out, followed by the sun, the moon and the stars; and still you will have to go on. You will come to regions more desolate and wretched than you ever dreamed could exist, places of sorrow created entirely by that mean superstition which you yourself have put about for so long. But still you will have to go onRichard Adams / quote ↗
21c. 1968 ADA foraging wild creature, intent above all upon survival, is as strong as the grass.Richard Adams / quote ↗
22c. 1968 ADStubbs may have envisaged the skeleton inside the horse, but most of us do notRichard Adams / quote ↗
23c. 1968 ADI dislike this whole business of experimentation on animals, unless there's some very good and altogether exceptional reason to this very case. The thing that gets me is that it's not possible for the animals to understand why they are being called upon to suffer. They don't suffer for their own good or benefit at all, and I often wonder how far it's for anyone's. They're given no choice, and there is no central authority responsible for deciding whether what's done is morally justifiable. These experiment animals are just sentient objects; they're useful because they are able to react; sometimes precisely because they're able to feel fear and pain. And they're used as if they were electric light bulbs or boots. What it comes to is that whereas there used to be human and animal slaves, now there are just animal slaves. They have no legal rights or choices in the matter.Richard Adams / quote ↗
24c. 1968 ADHow 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 / quote ↗
