Watership Down Quotes
"You must realize, my lord, how important they are and not hinder them in their beautiful lives."
"My people are the strongest in the world, for they breed faster and eat more than any of the other people."
"Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."
"El-ahrairah, your people cannot rule the world, for I will not have it so."
"I don’t know what we should have done without you just now, Bigwig."
"And so it came to pass, that they escaped all safe to land."
"No, we need to cross the river, Hazel, so that we can get into those fields—and on beyond them too."
"Personally, I’m going to wait until Fiver and Pipkin are fit to tackle it."
"The rabbit that goes back through the gap will run his head into trouble."
"Hopelessness and reluctance are blown away like a fog."
"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!"
"We don’t want to make enemies, but if we meet with any kind of interference—"
"He moved easily, without haste and showed less caution than they in crossing the field."
"You see these lettuces? Not one of them has been stolen since the seed was sown. Very soon now they will be ready and then I mean to hold a great feast for all my people."
"I'll have nothing to do with it. Dogs—you're like dogs carrying sticks."
"I know there's something unnatural and evil twisted all round this place."
"If we’re going to stay here we’ve got to learn to get on with them. We can’t fight them: they’re too big. And we don’t want them fighting us."
"The heavy work has all been done by countless great-grandmothers and their mates."
"There is nothing like bad weather to reveal the shortcomings of a dwelling, particularly if it is too small."
"We never need to dig. No one’s dug in my lifetime."
"It’s quite safe, Hazel. I know you’re used to taking a good look round when you silflay, but here we generally go straight out."
"My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today."
"We think Silverweed is one of the best poets we’ve had for many months."
"The simplest course will be to prove it to you."
"From that day to this, no power on earth can keep a rabbit out of a vegetable garden."
"He’s very good, isn’t he? We’re lucky to have him with us."
"The wind is blowing, blowing over the grass."
"Frith lies in the evening sky. The clouds are red about him."
"A thing can be true and still be desperate folly, Hazel."
"The warren? You’re going to the warren? You fools! That warren’s nothing but a death hole!"
"To say 'Where?' was bad enough, but to speak openly of the wires—that was intolerable."
"O Frith on the hills! He must have made it for us!"
"He may have made it, but Fiver thought of it for us."
"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."
"Acts of injustice done between the setting and the rising sun in history lie like bones, each one."
"That wasn’t why they destroyed the warren. It was just because we were in their way. They killed us to suit themselves."
"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."
"Collectively, rabbits rest secure upon Frith’s promise to El-ahrairah."
"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."
"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."
"All I’m saying is this. If anyone finds an animal or bird, that isn’t an enemy, in need of help, for goodness’ sake don’t miss the opportunity. That would be like leaving carrots to rot in the ground."
"We do not take moonlight for granted. It is like snow, or like the dew on a July morning."
"‘El-ahrairah did it once,’ said Bluebell, ‘and it worked. Do you remember?’"
"I must go back now to my friends in the hills: but we shall return. We shall come one night, and when we do, believe me, we shall open your hutch as easily as the farmer does: and then, any of you who wish will be free to come with us."
"The important thing was not to be stalked unawares."
"There are times when we know for a certainty that all is well."
"The spirit of happy mischief entered into Hazel."
"Risking your life and other rabbits' lives for something that's of little or no value to us."
"We don't want to steal your does. All four of you are welcome to join us, bucks and does alike. There's plenty for everyone on the hills."
"You're supposed to decide what's sensible and they trust you."
"We can't go on with nothing but these two does."
"It can't be done by fighting or fair words, no. So it will have to be done by means of a trick."
"The trick will have to do three things. First, it will have to get the does out of Efrafa and secondly it will have to put paid to the pursuit."
"Once we're clear of the place, we've got to become impossible to find—beyond the reach of any Wide Patrol."
"A trick, Blackberry: a trick to put us right once and for all."
"I believe we can do it. Anyway, I'm sure Hazel's right when he says it's the only chance we've got."
"He which hath no stomach to this fight, Let him depart, his passport shall be made And crowns for convoy put into his purse."
"I wonder what would happen if I lay down under it? They’d kick me out, I dare say. They wouldn’t have a crippled Chief Rabbit. This is a test as well as a welcome, even though they don’t know it themselves."
"We can do with a few well-behaved fellows like you. Look at that rough lot out there—they nearly finished me off!"
"It’s like this. We can stay here and try to make the best of things as they are, or we can put them right once and for all."
"I’m certainly going. Hazel’s perfectly right and there’s nothing the matter with his plan."
"Come where the grass is greener, And the lettuces grow in rows, And a rabbit of free demeanor Is known by his well-scratched nose."
"Wisdom is found on the desolate hillside, El-ahrairah, where none comes to feed, and the stony bank where the rabbit scratches a hole in vain."
"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."
"I can run and fight and spoil a story telling it. I’ve been an officer in an Owsla."
"They just don’t realize that everyone’s good depends on everyone’s cooperation."
"No rabbit will bolt toward elil, and that’s the real safeguard."
"I wonder how old Holly’s getting on," he thought, "and whether I’ll ever see him again: or Hazel either, for the matter of that. Well, I’ll give these blighters something to think about before I’ve finished. I do feel lonely, though. How hard it is to carry a secret by yourself!"
"Our children's children will hear a good story."
"I trusted you, Thlayli," he said. "You can trust me now. You'll either go into the river or be torn to pieces here—the whole lot of you. There's nowhere left to run."
"Frith sees you!" cried Bigwig. "You're not fit to be called a rabbit! May Frith blast you and your foul Owsla full of bullies!"
"I fought a member of the Council police," said Bigwig.
"Well, and what was to happen after that, Nelthilta?" asked General Woundwort.
"You dirty little beast," said Woundwort. "I hear you've attacked one of the Council police and broken his leg. We'll settle with you here. There's no need to take you back to Efrafa."
"Come on, get out of the way," he said. "I'm going to sleep now, Hazel, and Frith help you if you say I'm not."
"It's not far now and then we'll all be safe. This way."
"Dame Hickory, Dame Hickory, Here's a wolf at your door, His teeth grinning white. And his tongue wagging sore!"
"He had not. On the contrary, he had kept up the pursuit in spite of Kehaar and had actually carried out a scheme to cut off the fugitives’ retreat."
"And fools we look now. Make no mistake about that."
"I told Thlayli I’d kill him myself. He may have forgotten that, but I haven’t."
"If they’ve sent him to ask our terms, he’d better take them back."
"Rabbits have enough enemies as it is. They ought not to make more among themselves."
"The enforced passivity of their defence, the interminable waiting, became insupportable."
"You told me once to start by impressing you, General. I hope I have."
"I haven’t time to sit here talking nonsense."