Watership Down Quotes

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.

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

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.

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

Silflay hraka, u embleer rah!

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.

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.

Lots of little Bigwigs, Hazel! Think of that, and tremble!

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?

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

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.

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.

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

I am sorry for you with all my heart. But you cannot blame us, for you came to kill us if you could.

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

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.

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.

Black Rabbit: Hazel... Hazel... you know me, don't you? Hazel: I don't know. [the apparition reveals himself to be the Black Rabbit, and Hazel gasps] Hazel: Yes, my lord. I know you. Black Rabbit: I've come to ask if you'd like to join my Owsla. We shall be glad to have you, and I know you'd like it. You've been feeling tired, haven't you? If you're ready, we might go along now. [Hazel looks at all the younger rabbits of Watership Down] Black Rabbit: You needn't worry about them. They'll be all right, and thousands like them. If you come along now, I'll show you what I mean.

That wasn't why they destroyed the warren. It was just because we were in their way. They killed us to suit themselves.

At 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.

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.

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.

To come to the end of a time of anxiety and fear! To feel the cloud that hung over us lift and disperse—the 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.

I’d rather succeed in doing what we can than fail to do what we can’t.

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.

For that matter, Odysseus himself might have borrowed a trick or two from the rabbit hero, for he is very old and was never at a loss for a trick to deceive his enemies.

Underground, the story continued.

Rabbits need dignity and, above all, the will to accept their fate.

A foraging wild creature, intent above all upon survival, is as strong as the grass.

A wild animal that feels that it no longer has any reason to live reaches in the end a point when its remaining energies may actually be directed toward dying.

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

We go by the will of the black rabbit. When he calls you, you have to go

Who wants to hear about brave deeds when he’s ashamed of his own, and who likes an open, honest tale from someone he’s deceiving?

Love the animals. God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Don’t trouble it, don’t harass them, don’t deprive them of their happiness, don’t work against God’s intent. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

We do not take moonlight for granted. It is like snow, or like dew on a July morning. It does not reveal but changes what it covers.

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.

Hoi, hoi u embleer hrair! M'saion ule' hraka vair!

The primroses were over.

What is, is what must be.

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.

Odysseus...sleeps sound beside Calypso and when he wakes thinks only of Penelope.

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. A foraging wild creature, intent above all upon survival, is as strong as the grass.

Why do the men come, do you suppose?" "Who knows why men do anything?

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

A rabbit sneeze on the morning breeze sets homesick hearts aglow sitting with his rumps in a chicory clump and longing for a nice plump doe.

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.

Most of them had not understood Blackberry's discovery of the raft and at once forgot it.

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.

You can't call your life your own: and in return you have safety, if it's worth having at the price you pay.

The full moon, well risen in a cloudless eastern sky, covered the high solitude with its light. We are not conscious of daylight as that which displaces darkness. Daylight, even when the sun is clear of clouds, seems to us simply the natural condition of the earth and air. When we think of the downs, we think of the downs in daylight, as with think of a rabbit with its fur on. Stubbs may have envisaged the skeleton inside the horse, but most of us do not: and we do not usually envisage the downs without daylight, even though the light is not a part of the down itself as the hide is part of the horse itself. We take daylight for granted. But moonlight is another matter. It is inconstant. The full moon wanes and returns again. Clouds may obscure it to an extent to which they cannot obscure daylight. Water is necessary to us, but a waterfall is not. Where it is to be found it is something extra, a beautiful ornament. We need daylight and to that extent it us utilitarian, but moonlight we do not need. When it comes, it serves no necessity. It transforms. It falls upon the banks and the grass, separating one long blade from another; turning a drift of brown, frosted leaves from a single heap to innumerable flashing fragments; or glimmering lengthways along wet twigs as though light itself were ductile. Its long beams pour, white and sharp, between the trunks of trees, their clarity fading as they recede into the powdery, misty distance of beech woods at night. In moonlight, two acres of coarse bent grass, undulant and ankle deep, tumbled and rough as a horse's mane, appear like a bay of waves, all shadowy troughs and hollows. The growth is so thick and matted that event the wind does not move it, but it is the moonlight that seems to confer stillness upon it. We do not take moonlight for granted. It is like snow, or like the dew on a July morning. It does not reveal but changes what it covers. And its low intensity---so much lower than that of daylight---makes us conscious that it is something added to the down, to give it, for only a little time, a singular and marvelous quality that we should admire while we can, for soon it will be gone again.

Your storm, Thlayli-rah. Use it.

When Marco Polo came at last to Cathay, seven hundred years ago, did he not feel--and did his heart not falter as he realized--that this great and splendid capital of an empire had had its being all the years of his life and far longer, and that he had been ignorant of it? That it was in need of nothing from him, from Venice, from Europe? That it was full of wonders beyond his understanding? That his arrival was a matter of no importance whatever? We know that he felt these things, and so has many a traveler in foreign parts who did not know what he was going to find. 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.

Rabbits have enough enemies as it is. They ought not to make more among themselves.

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

Some say that the Black Rabbit hates us and wants our destruction. But the truth is—or so they taught me—that he, too, serves Lord Frith and does no more than his appointed task

People who record birdsong generally do it very early--before six o'clock--if they can. Soon after that, the invasion of distant noise in most woodland becomes too constant and too loud.

Wisdom is found on the desolate hillside... where none comes to feed, and the stony bank where the rabbit scratches a hole in vain.

Stubbs may have envisaged the skeleton inside the horse, but most of us do not

The rabbits became strange in many ways, different from other rabbits. They knew well enough what was happening. But even to themselves they pretended that all was well, for the food was good, they were protected, they had nothing to fear but the one fear; and that struck here and there, never enough at a time to drive them away.They forgot the ways of wild rabbits. They forgot El-ahrairah, for what use had they for tricks and cunning, living in the enemy's warren and paying his price?

Hazel, like nearly all wild animals, was unaccustomed to look up at the sky. What he thought of as the sky was the horizon, usually broken by trees and hedges.

With a kind of wry envy, Hazel realized that Bigwig was actually looking forward to meeting the Efrafan assault. He knew he could fight and he meant to show it. He was not thinking of anything else. The hopelessness of their chances had no important place in his thoughts. Even the sound of the digging, clearer already, only set him thinking of the best way to sell his life as dearly as he could.

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. Odysseus brings not one man to shore with him. Yet he sleeps sound beside Calypso and when he wakes thinks only of Penelope.

I don’t know what I’d been expecting. 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.

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

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

Bigwig, as he had predicted, was getting his head bitten off.

Sometimes it's beautiful and we fall in love with all that story. Even after a thousand pages we don't want to leave the world the writer has made for us, or the make-believe people who live there. You wouldn't leave after two thousand pages, if there were two thousand. The Rings trilogy of J.R.R.Tolkien is a perfect example of this. A thousand pages of hobbits hasn't been enough for three generations of post-World War II fantasy fans; even when you add in that clumsy, galumphing dirigible of an epilogue, The Silmarillion, it hasn't been enough. Hence Terry Brooks, Piers Anthony, Robert Jordan, the questing rabbits of Watership Down, and half a hundred others. The writers of these books are creating the hobbits they still love and pine for; they are trying to bring Frodo and Sam back from the Grey Havens because Tolkien is no longer around to do it for them.

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.

You needn't worry about them," said his companion. "They'll be alright - and thousands like them. If you'll come along, I'll show you what I mean.

Frith meant us to get back,” replied Holly. “That’s the real reason why we’re here.

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

flea bitten louts!

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.

Bargains, 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.

Bluebell: Please, sir, I'm only a little [car] and I've left all my petrol on the grass. So if you don't mind eating the grass, sir, while I give this lady a ride- Hazel: Bluebell, shut up!

My lord,' replied El-ahrairah, 'I have come to give you my life. My life for my people.' The Black Rabbit drew his claws along the floor. Bargains, bargains, El-ahrairah,' he said. 'There is not a day or a 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.

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.

You can pluck up your spirits, Bluebell,” he said. “I think we’re close to the iron road.” “I wouldn’t care about my spirits,” said Bluebell, “if my legs weren’t so tired. Slugs are lucky not to have legs. I think I’ll be a slug.” “Well, I’m a hedgehog,” said Hazel, “so you’d better get on!” “You’re not,” replied Bluebell. “You haven’t enough fleas. Now, slugs don’t have fleas, either. How comforting to be a slug, among the dandelions so snug—” “And feel the blackbird’s sudden tug,” said Hazel.

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

Narrow lanes climb both slopes and come together in a great ring of elm trees which encircles the flat summit. Any wind--even the slightest--draws from the height of the elms a rushing sound, multifoliate and powerful.

I know. And we have no does--not one--and no does means no kittens and in a few years no warren." It may seem incredible that the rabbits had given no thought to so vital a matter. But men have made the same mistake more than once--left the whole business out of account, or been content to trust to luck and the fortune of war.

Before such people can act together, a kind of telepathic feeling has to flow through them and ripen to the point when they all know that they are ready to begin. Anyone who has seen the martins and swallows in September, assembling on the telephone wires, twittering, making short flights singly and in groups over the open, stubbly fields, returning to form longer and even longer lines above the yellowing verges of the lanes-the hundreds of individual birds merging and blending, in a mounting excitement, into swarms, and these swarms coming loosely and untidily together to create a great, unorganized flock, thick at the centre and ragged at the edges, which breaks and re-forms continually like clouds or waves-until that moment when the greater part (but not all) of them know that the time has come: they are off, and have begun once more that great southward flight which many will not survive; anyone seeing this has seen at the work the current that flows (among creatures who think of themselves primarily as part of a group and only secondarily, if at all, as individuals) to fuse them together and impel them into action without conscious thought or will: has seen at work the angel which drove the First Crusade into Antioch and drives the lemmings into the sea.

El-ahrairah, your people cannot rule the world, for I will not have it so. 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.

Oh, Frith help me!” said Fiver, trembling. “I can smell him from here. He terrifies me.” “Oh, Fiver, don’t be absurd! He just smells the same as the rest of them.” “He smells like barley rained down and left to rot in the fields. He smells like a wounded mole that can’t get underground.” “He smells like a big, fat rabbit to me, with a lot of carrots inside. But I’ll come with you.

alighted near Hazel and Fiver. “How’s Holly?” asked Hazel. “’E sad,” said Kehaar. “’E say you no come back.” Then he added, “Mees Clover, she ready for mudder.” “That’s good,” said Hazel. “Is anyone doing anything about it?” “Ya, ya, ees all to fight.” “Oh, well, I suppose it’ll sort itself out.

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! The sparrows in the plowland were crouching in terror of the kestrel. But she has gone; and they fly pell-mell up the hedgerow, frisking, chattering and perching where they will.

At that instant a dazzling claw of lightning streaked down the length of the sky. The hedge and the distant trees seemed to leap forward in the brilliance of the flash. Immediately upon it came the thunder: a high, tearing noise, as though some huge thing were being ripped to pieces close above, which deepened and turned to enormous blows of dissolution. Then the rain fell like a waterfall. In a few seconds the ground was covered with water and over it, to a height of inches, rose a haze formed of a myriad minute splashes. Stupefied with the shock, unable even to move, the sodden rabbits crouched inert, almost pinned to the earth by the rain.

It was as easy as breathing to go and have tea near the place where Jane Austen had so wittily scribbled and so painfully died. One of the things that causes some critics to marvel at Miss Austen is the laconic way in which, as a daughter of the epoch that saw the Napoleonic Wars, she contrives like a Greek dramatist to keep it off the stage while she concentrates on the human factor. I think this comes close to affectation on the part of some of her admirers. Captain Frederick Wentworth in Persuasion, for example, is partly of interest to the female sex because of the 'prize' loot he has extracted from his encounters with Bonaparte's navy. Still, as one born after Hiroshima I can testify that a small Hampshire township, however large the number of names of the fallen on its village-green war memorial, is more than a world away from any unpleasantness on the European mainland or the high or narrow seas that lie between. (I used to love the detail that Hampshire's 'New Forest' is so called because it was only planted for the hunt in the late eleventh century.) I remember watching with my father and brother through the fence of Stanstead House, the Sussex mansion of the Earl of Bessborough, one evening in the early 1960s, and seeing an immense golden meadow carpeted entirely by grazing rabbits. I'll never keep that quiet, or be that still, again. This was around the time of countrywide protest against the introduction of a horrible laboratory-confected disease, named 'myxomatosis,' into the warrens of old England to keep down the number of nibbling rodents. Richard Adams's lapine masterpiece Watership Down is the remarkable work that it is, not merely because it evokes the world of hedgerows and chalk-downs and streams and spinneys better than anything since The Wind in the Willows, but because it is only really possible to imagine gassing and massacre and organized cruelty on this ancient and green and gently rounded landscape if it is organized and carried out against herbivores.

Are you angry, El-ahrairah?’ asked Lord Frith. “‘No, my lord,’ replied El-ahrairah, ‘I am not angry. But 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.

Mixed with the resinous scent of the firs there came another smell, strong and fragrant, yet sharp—the perfume of flowers, but of some kind unknown to Hazel. He followed it to its source at the edge of the wood. It came from several thick patches of soapwort growing along the edge of the pasture. Some of the plants were not yet in bloom, their buds curled in pink, pointed spirals held in the pale green calices, but most were already star-flowering and giving off their strong scent. The bats were hunting among the flies and moths attracted to the soapwort.

When several creatures, men or animals, have worked together to overcome something offering resistance and have at last succeeded, there follows often a pause, as though they felt the propriety of paying respect to the adversary who has put up so good a fight. The great tree falls, splitting, cracking, rushing down in leaves to the final, shuddering blow along the ground. Then the foresters are silent, and do not at once sit down. After hours, the deep snowdrift has been cleared and the lorry is ready to take the men home out of the cold. But they stand a while, leaning on their spades and only nodding unsmilingly as the car-drivers go through, waving their thanks.

The full moon, well risen in a cloudless eastern sky, covered the high solitude with its light. We are not conscious of daylight as that which displaces darkness. Daylight, even when the sun is clear of clouds, seems to us simply the natural condition of the earth and air. When we think of the downs, we think of the downs in daylight, as we think of a rabbit with its fur on. Stubbs may have envisaged the skeleton inside the horse, but most of us do not: and we do not usually envisage the downs without daylight, even though the

Then El-ahrairah knew that Frith was too clever for him and he was frightened. He thought that the fox and the weasel were coming with Frith and he turned to the face of the hill and begin to dig. He dug a hole, but he had dug only a little of it when Frith came over the hill alone. And he saw El-ahrairah's bottom sticking out of the hole and the sand flying out in showers as the digging went on. When he saw that, he called out, 'My friend, have you seen El-ahrairah, for I am looking for him to give him my gift?' 'No,' answered El-ahrairah, without coming out, 'I have not seen him. He is far away. He could not come.' So Frith said, 'Then come out of that hole and I will bless you instead of him.' 'No, I cannot,' said El-ahrairah, 'I am busy. The fox and the weasel are coming. If you want to bless me you can bless my bottom, for it is sticking out of the hole.

Damos por sentada la luz del día. En cambio, la luz de la luna es otra cuestión. Es inconstante. La luna llena mengua y reaparece. Las nubes pueden oscurecerla hasta un punto que no pueden oscurecer la luz del día. El agua es necesaria para nosotros, pero una cascada no lo es. Y siempre que encontramos una cascada, no es sino algo superfluo, un bello ornamento. Necesitamos la luz del día, pero no la luz de la luna. Cuando llega, no cubre ninguna necesidad. Transforma. Cae sobre los márgenes y la hierba, separando una larga brizna de otra; convirtiendo un montón de hojas marrones y mates en innumerables y álgidos fragmentos; o iluminando las ramas húmedas como si la propia luz fuera dúctil. Sus largos rayos se derraman, blancos y afilados, entre los troncos de los árboles, y palidecen y retroceden al penetrar en la brumosa distancia de los bosques de hayas.