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b83e053
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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.
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Richard Adams |
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33f5b49
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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.
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Richard Adams |
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48a5956
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My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.
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grief
loss
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Richard Adams |
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ad468b0
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Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it.
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Richard Adams |
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b804165
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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.
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Richard Adams |
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79509a8
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He fought because he actually felt safer fighting than running.
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Richard Adams |
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9e35e6e
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My Chief Rabbit has told me to stay and defend this run, and until he says otherwise, I shall stay here. --Bigwig
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Richard Adams |
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24a978f
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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 mos..
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lyrical
description
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Richard Adams |
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c2d883b
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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." --
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Richard Adams |
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3c9e9b4
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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."
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Richard Adams |
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f49285b
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Silflay hraka, u embleer rah!
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Richard Adams |
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3c6ed3f
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A thing can be true and still be desperate folly, Hazel.
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truth
richard-adams
watership-down
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Richard Adams |
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86a9224
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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.
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Richard Adams |
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8730099
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Lots of little Bigwigs, Hazel! Think of that, and tremble!
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Richard Adams |
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bae6b21
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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.
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Richard Adams |
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398aa78
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We all have to meet our match sometime or other.
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Richard Adams |
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8454215
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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.
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watership-down
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Richard Adams |
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15a4294
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Rabbit underground, rabbit safe and sound.
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Richard Adams |
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49146f6
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Men will never rest till they've spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals.
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Richard Adams |
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00023d4
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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.
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leadership
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Richard Adams |
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dc720f5
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They want to be natural, the anti-social little beasts. They just don't realize that everyone's good depends on everyone's cooperation.
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Richard Adams |
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44d8499
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I am sorry for you with all my heart. But you cannot blame us, for you came to kill us if you could.
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Richard Adams |
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26cda71
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Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed.
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Richard Adams |
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6652550
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Rabbits live close to death and when death comes closer than usual, thinking about survival leaves little room for anything else.
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Richard Adams |
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36a7182
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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."
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rain
rabbit
proverb
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Richard Adams |
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23b860d
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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 wh..
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Richard Adams |
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d52f0e7
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That wasn't why they destroyed the warren. It was just because we were in their way. They killed us to suit themselves.
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Richard Adams |
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b51e1ce
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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.
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Richard Adams |
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9863d6c
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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,..
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human
resiliency
richard-adams
watership-down
survival
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Richard Adams |
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8d8e1a3
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You're trying to eat grass that isn't there. Why don't you give it a chance to grow?
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worry
patience
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Richard Adams |
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9d8fdb6
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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.
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Richard Adams |
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9aa2cd3
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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..
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Richard Adams |
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5552d98
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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.
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Richard Adams |
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e9bb7a8
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Dangerous thing, a name. Someone might catch hold of you by it, mightn't they?
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Richard Adams |
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87b9fbb
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No, 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 th..
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perseverance
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Richard Adams |
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ae460af
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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.
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sacrifice
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Richard Adams |
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5f66bab
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A foraging wild creature, intent above all upon survival, is as strong as the grass.
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Richard Adams |
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efd992b
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If you want to bless me you can bless my bottom, for it is sticking out of the hole.
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Richard Adams |
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1a8505f
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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
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Richard Adams |
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65924f4
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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.
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Richard Adams |
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7d1fcfa
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Underground, the story continued.
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Richard Adams |
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ff2573e
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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, livi..
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Richard Adams |
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1da3069
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Rabbits need dignity and, above all, the will to accept their fate.
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rabbits
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Richard Adams |
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626c5dd
|
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.
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human-cruelty
evil
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Richard Adams |