James Herriot Quotes

“For years I used to bore my wife over lunch with stories about funny incidents.”

“For years I used to bore my wife over lunch with stories about funny incidents.”

“I wish people would realize that animals are totally dependent on us, helpless, like children, a trust that is put upon us.”

“I have felt cats rubbing their faces against mine and touching my cheek with claws carefully sheathed. These things, to me, are expressions of love.”

“Cats are connoisseurs of comfort.”

“I hope to make people realize how totally helpless animals are, how dependent on us, trusting as a child must that we will be kind and take care of their needs.”

“And the peace which I always found in the silence and emptiness of the moors filled me utterly”

“My mind went back to that picture in the obstetrics book. A cow standing in the middle of a gleaming floor while a sleek veterinary surgeon in a spotless parturition overall inserted his arm to a polite distance. He was relaxed and smiling, the farmer and his helpers were smiling, even the cow was smiling. There was no dirt or blood or sweat anywhere.That man in the picture had just finished an excellent lunch and had moved next door to do a bit of calving just for the sheer pleasure of it, as a kind of dessert. He hadn't crawled shivering from his bed at two o'clock in the morning and bumped over twelve miles of frozen snow, staring sleepily ahead till the lonely farm showed in the headlights. He hadn't climbed half a mile of white fell-side to the doorless barn where his patient lay.”

“If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.”

“I went back to my conversation with Siegfried that morning”

“Annie partially convinced Zee that Jesse was a preposterous, irresponsible man, but America seemed spellbound by him. Correspondents sought to locate him, mysteries about the James brothers were considered in editorials, reports of their robberies seemed to be such a national addiction that nickel books were being published in order to offer more imaginative adventures. Insofar as it wasn’t them that the James gang robbed, the public seemed to wish Jesse a prolonged life and great prosperity. He was their champion and their example, the apple of their eyes ; at times it even seemed to Zee that she wasn’t Jesse’s only wife, that America had married him too. And it seemed a joy to many of them when a reinvigorated James gang – without the man’s more prudential older brother – robbed the Chicago and Alton Railroad at Glendale, Missouri, in October 1879.”