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

- James Herriot

Cats are connoisseurs of comfort.

- James Herriot

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.

- James Herriot, If Only They Could Talk

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

- James Herriot

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.

- James Herriot

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

- James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small

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.

- James Herriot

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

- James Herriot

I went back to my conversation with Siegfried that morning

- we had just about decided that the man with a lot of animals couldn't be expected to feel affection for individuals among them. But those buildings back there were full of John Skipton's animals - he must have hundreds. Yet what made him trail down that hillside every day in all weathers? Why had he filled the last years of those two old horses with peace and beauty? Why had he given them a final ease and comfort which he had withheld from himself? It could only be love.