Best known as the author of Watership Down, Shardik and The Plague Dogs Richard Adams was born on May 9th 1920 in in Wash Common near Newbury, Berkshire, England.
His most famous novel, Watership Down began as a story told to his two daughters and after they demanded he turn it into a book he was met with rejection from four publishers and three writers’ agencies. Determined to see his story published he persevered and finally Rex Collins agreed to take the book on and it was an immediate success with over a million copies sold in the first few years after its publication. With some of the most believable anthropomorphised characterisations here we have ten Richard Adams Quotes to make you think.
“My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.”
“Animals don’t behave like men. 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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“We all have to meet our match sometime or other.”
“To come to the end of a time of anxiety and fear! To feel the cloud that hung over us lift and disperse – that 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.”
“Men will never rest till they’ve spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals.”
“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?”
“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.”
“I don’t like straight lines: men make them.”
With news of another book in the pipeline, the sad news of Adams death on December 27th 2016 at the age of 96 brought an amazing author’s life to a close.
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