James Herriot Quotes

Over the years I knew her she always looked at me like that - as though I was a quite pleasant but amusing object - and it always did the same thing to me. It's difficult to put into words but perhaps I can best describe it by saying that if I had been a little dog I'd have gone leaping and gambolling around the room wagging my tail furiously.

You don't find cows with names any more and there aren't any farmers like Mr. Dakin, who somehow scratched a living from a herd of six milkers plus a few calves, pigs and hens.

I could do terrible things to people who dump unwanted animals by the roadside.

I don't think he ever gave a thought to other people's opinions, which was just as well because they were often unkind

Every day lasts a year. I never enjoy anything. And every morning when I wake up I dread having to face the world again.

Dogs like to obey. It gives them security.

If a farmer calls me to a sick animal, he couldn't care less if I were George Bernard Shaw.

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

I am never at my best in the early morning, especially a cold morning in the Yorkshire spring with a piercing March wind sweeping down from the fells, finding its way inside my clothing, nipping at my nose and ears.

Came in elegant white cartons, so much more impressive than

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

Animals are unpredictable things, and so our life is unpredictable. It's a long tale of little triumphs and disasters and you've got to really like it to stick it.

Felt drained. Watching the life of the

As I trailed dumbly up the next flight it seemed strange that we had never said goodbye. We didn't know when, if ever, we would see each other again yet neither of us had said a word. I don't know if Siegfried wanted to say anything but there was a lot try trying to burst from me.
I wanted to thank him for being a friend as well as a boss, for teaching me so much, for never letting me down. There were other things, too, but I never said them.
Come to think of it, I've never even thanked him for that fifty pounds…until now.

At times it seemed unfair that I should be paid for my work; for driving out in the early morning with the fields glittering under the first pale sunshine and the wisps of mist still hanging on the high tops.

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.

Why had I entered this profession? I could have gone in for something easier and gentler - like coalmining or lumberjacking.

His favourite ploy was to push his leg round the corner of the table and withdraw it repeatedly just as the cat pawed at it. Oscar was justifiably irritated by this teasing but showed his character by lying in wait for Tristan one night and biting him smartly in the ankle before he could start his tricks.

That quotation about not having time to stand and stare has never applied to me. I seem to have spent a good part of my life - probably too much - in just standing and staring and I was at it again this morning.

Cats are connoisseurs of comfort.

I can't bear it, Mr. Herriot. He was like a Christian was that pig, just like a Christian.

I seem to have spent a good part of my life - probably too much – in just standing and staring.

She's out, Jim! The bugger's out!" Well this was great. Anybody who has driven a car with a hysterical cat hurtling around the interior will appreciate my situation.

I will write another book if I feel like it.

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 have never been able to use that soap since. Scents are too evocative and the merest whiff jerks me back to that first night away from my wife, and to the feeling I had then.

This old man had once told me that he left school when he was twelve, whereas I had spent most of the twenty-four years in my life in study. Yet when I looked back on the last hour or so I could come to only one conclusion. I'd had more of books, but he had more of learning.

If you decide to become a veterinary surgeon you will never grow rich, but you will have a life of endless interest and variety.

And just then the thin boy yawned. I had labelled him as an ineffectual sort of lad but he certainly could yawn; it was a stretching, groaning, voluptuous paroxysm which drowned my words and it went on and on till he finally lay back, bleary and exhausted by the effort.

A farmer once told me one of the greatest luxuries of his life was to wake up early only to go back to sleep again.

Old Herriot may be limited in some respects, but by God, he can wrap a cat.

No animal is a better judge of comfort than a cat ...

I became a connoisseur of that nasty thud a manuscript makes when it comes through the letter box.

Then the bull shook himself, turned his head and looked at us. There was an awed whisper from one of the young men: "By gaw, it's working!" I enjoyed myself after that. I can't think of anything in my working life that has given me more pleasure than standing in that pen directing the life-saving jet and watching the bull savouring it.

And there was that letter from the Bramleys - that really made me feel good. You don't find people like the Bramleys now; radio, television and the motorcar have carried the outside world into the most isolated places so that the simple people you used to meet on the lonely farms are rapidly becoming like people anywhere else. There are still a few left, of course - old folk who cling to the ways of their fathers and when I come across any of them I like to make some excuse to sit down and talk with them and listen to the old Yorkshire words and expressions which have almost disappeared.

We were using ether and oxygen as anaesthetic and she was particularly adept at holding her breath while the mask was on her face then returning suddenly to violent life when we thought she was asleep. We were both sweating when she finally went under.

Maybe ye don't know it, Mr. Herriot, but this is the best time of your life.' 'Do you think so?' 'Aye, there's no doubt about it. When your children are young and growin' up around ye - that's when it's best. It's the same for everybody, only a lot o' folk don't know it and a lot find out when it's too late. It doesn't last long, you know.