“Dangerous thing, a name. Someone might catch hold of you by it, mightn't they?”
― Richard Adams, quote from The Plague Dogs
“When the man was disgraced and told to go away, he was allowed to ask all the animals whether any of them would come with him and share his fortunes and his life. There were only two who agreed to come entirely of their own accord, and they were the dog and the cat. And ever since then, those two have been jealous of each other, and each is for ever trying to make man choose which one he likes best. Every man prefers one or the other.”
― Richard Adams, quote from The Plague Dogs
“He was after a sensational story and this, of course, could not be constructed out of mere truth; not out of officially released truth, anyway. It was essential that the news-reading public should feel, first, that the community was in danger and secondly that people—well-off people, “official” people—who ought to have known better, were to blame for it.”
― Richard Adams, quote from The Plague Dogs
“A quick run past the rabbits' execution shed, a turn around the kittens' quicklime pit, a moment's hesitation beyond the monkeys' gas-chamber--and they are gone: ay, not so long ago these canines fled away into the storm. It would be pleasant to report that that night Dr. Boycott dreamt of many a woe, and all his whitecoat-men with shade and form of witch and demon and large coffin-worm were long be-nightmared. One might even have hoped to add that Tyson the old died palsy-twitched, with meagre face deform. But in fact--as will be seen--none of these things happened. Slowly the rain ceased, the grey rack blowing away and over Windermere as first light came creeping into the sky and the remaining inmates of Lawson Park woke to another day in the care and service of humanity.”
― Richard Adams, quote from The Plague Dogs
“Sheep used to have wings. One flew into the sky and all the others followed. They took their wings off while feeding in the warm sun but the wind blew away their wings so they couldn't fly anymore. They had to return to earth by drifting to where the sky curves down and touches the land, and then walk round the long way.. i like that..”
― Richard Adams, quote from The Plague Dogs
“How 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 from The Plague Dogs
“Once the moon gets to be full somebody - some man or other - goes up every day and slices bits of one side until there isn't any more,and then after a bit a new one grows. Men do that with all sorts of things, actually - rose bushes for instance.... The man who slices the bits off brings them down here and then they're used for making those lights on the cars. Clever isn't it... They only last about one night, I should think, because you hardly ever see them shining by day.”
― Richard Adams, quote from The Plague Dogs
Richard Adams
Born place: in Newbury, Berkshire, England, The United Kingdom
Born date May 9, 1920
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“The devil makes many disciples by preaching against sin. He convinces them that the great evil of sin, induces a crisis of guilt by which “God is satisfied," and after that he lets them spend the rest of their lives meditating on the intense sinfulness and evident reprobation of other men.”
― Thomas Merton, quote from New Seeds of Contemplation
“The effect of education on political attitudes is complicated,
for democratic society. The self-professed aim of modern education
is to "liberate" people from prejudices and traditional forms
of authority. Educated people are said not to obey authority
blindly, but rather learn to think for themselves. Even if this
doesn't happen on a mass basis, people can be taught to see their
own self-interest more clearly, and over a longer time horizon.
Education also makes people demand more of themselves and for
themselves; in other words, they acquire a certain sense of dignity
which they want to have respected by their fellow citizens and by
the state. In a traditional peasant society, it is possible for a local
landlord (or, for that matter, a communist commissar) to recruit
peasants to kill other peasants and dispossess them of their land.
They do so not because it is in their interest, but because they are
used to obeying authority. Urban professionals in developed countries, on the other hand, can be recruited to a lot of nutty
causes like liquid diets and marathon running, but they tend not
to volunteer for private armies or death squads simply because
someone in a uniform tells them to do so”
― Francis Fukuyama, quote from The End of History and the Last Man
“There's plenty about my life I can't change. Can't bring the dead back to life on this earth. Can't make the world loving and kind. Can't change myself into a millionaire. But a patch of ground in this trashy lot -- I can change that. Can change it big. Better to put my time into that than moaning about the other all day.”
― Paul Fleischman, quote from Seedfolks
“Hu’s heart clanged like fifteen buckets in a single well.”
― Shi Nai'an, quote from Outlaws of the Marsh
“dolphins in the water. He recalled that the dolphins usually gathered there when”
― Amitav Ghosh, quote from The Hungry Tide
The Sweet Far Thing
Confessions
The Fall of the Hous...
The Physician
The New York Trilogy
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