“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.”

Source: Watership Down

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "For that matter, Odysseus himself might have borrowed a trick or two from the rabbit hero, for he is very old and was n…" by Richard Adams?

Richard Adams23

English novelist best known as the author of Watership Down 1920–2016

Related quotes

“Nick Machiavel had ne'er a trick,
Though he gave his name to our Old Nick.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto I, line 1313
Source: Hudibras, Part III (1678)

“Yet the greater part of it, I shall show, is nonsense, tricked out with a variety of metaphysical conceits, and its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself.”

Peter Medawar (1915–1987) scientist

1960s, Review of Teilhard de Chardin's "The Phenomenon of Man", 1961

“The trick is growing up without growing old.”

Casey Stengel (1890–1975) American baseball player and coach

“What magical trick makes us intelligent? The trick is that there is no trick. The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single, perfect principle.”

Marvin Minsky book Society of Mind

Source: The Society of Mind (1987), p. 308

“Can you understand the soul of a man who never hesitated to take steps that would have the effect of hoodwinking people, who would use every trick of the markets to mislead, and who was at the same time scrupulous never to utter a direct lie on the most insignificant matter? Manderson was like that, and he was not the only one. I suppose you might compare the state of mind to that of a soldier who is personally a truthful man, but who will stick at nothing to deceive the enemy. The rules of the game allow it; and the same may be said of business as many business men regard it. Only with them it is always wartime.”

Edmund Clerihew Bentley book Trent's Last Case

Source: Trent's Last Case (1912), Chapter XV: "Double Cunning"

“You can't teach an old dogma new tricks.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: Attributed to Parker after her death, by Robert E. Drennan The Algonquin Wits (1968), p. 124. However the same quip appears anonymously fifteen years earlier, in the trade journal Sales Management (Chicago: Dartnell Corp., 1918-75), vol. 70 (Survey of Buying Power, 1953), p. 80: "Marxism never changes. You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks."