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. ~ James Herriot

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

Cats are connoisseurs of comfort. ~ James Herriot

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. ~ 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

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. ~ James Herriot

Dogs like to obey. It gives them security. ~ James Herriot

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

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

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. ~ James Herriot

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. ~ James Herriot

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. ~ James Herriot

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. ~ James Herriot

I do actually have a connection with James Herriot because we went to school in the same area. I went to Hillhead Primary School in the West End of Glasgow and he went to Hillhead Secondary. ~ Iain De Caestecker

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. ~ James Herriot

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. ~ James Herriot

Came in elegant white cartons, so much more impressive than ~ 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

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. ~ James Herriot

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. ~ James Herriot

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. ~ James Herriot

No animal is a better judge of comfort than a cat ... ~ James Herriot

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. ~ James Herriot

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

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

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

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

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

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. ~ James Herriot

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. ~ James Herriot

I will write another book if I feel like it. ~ James Herriot

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. ~ James Herriot

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

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

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

Felt drained. Watching the life of the ~ James Herriot

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

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

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. ~ James Herriot

You're just here for the ride. For the incredible, indescribable Maximum Ride.
Max's Voice ~ James Patterson

The world's central banks and the International Monetary Fund still have vaults full of bullion, even though currencies are no longer backed by gold. Governments hold on to it as a kind of magic symbol, a way of reassuring people that their money is real. ~ James Surowiecki

The easy path of aging is to become a thick-skinned, unbudging curmudgeon, a battle-ax. To grow soft and sweet is the harder way. ~ James Hillman

It was the security man's nightmare scenario. In the face of death, why wouldn't there be riots? Why wouldn't there be killing and theft and rape? If there were no consequences – or if all the consequences were the same – then anything became possible. It was his job to expect the worst of humanity, including himself. ~ James S.A. Corey

I am not a member of a racial minority, and I am well aware of the reality that far too many individuals of color are harassed by officers for no good reason, so it is easier for me to give the above advice than for others who have been subject to such harassment. After all, I have never been stopped by a police officer who thought I was riding a bike that looked like it might be too expensive for somebody of my race. And I cannot imagine how frustrating such prejudicial suspicion must be. But you cannot make your situation any better by refusing to cooperate with the officer, no matter how unreasonable you may think the police officer is being, or by refusing to disclose two simple things: (1) your name, and (2) whether you have some lawful reason for your curious presence or conduct at that moment at some place where the officer already knows you are, because he or she is standing right there with you. Those ~ James Duane

I have a lot of nightmares. ~ James L. Brooks

My philosophy is: Everybody needs to look out for everybody else. ~ Robert James Thomson

Honestly, Jack, your handwriting is terrible."
Jackson held up both hands. "What can I say? I'm a doctor. ~ Vic James

In the last James Bond movie, the villain was a culture captain, a tycoon of culture, a Murdoch figure. It's not as if people don't know what is going on. ~ Thomas Frank

For far too long, the people of Northern Ireland have been denied an equal voice and equal representation in government. It is time for the Assembly and Executive to be up and running and the people's business to be addressed. ~ James T. Walsh

If a candidate for office starts talking about thinning the deer population or investing in barriers to reduce the number of deer on the highways, the other side will probably just ignore him, because they're not going to know what to say about it. But there is a chance that the issue will resonate with voters in an unexpected way. ~ Bill James

In my utopia, human solidarity would be seen not as a fact to be recognised by clearing away "prejudice" or burrowing down to previously hidden depths but, rather, as a goal to be achieved. It is to be achieved not by inquiry but by imagination, the imaginative ability to see strange people as fellow sufferers. Solidarity is not discovered by reflection but created. It is created by increasing our sensitivity to the particular details of the pain and humiliation of other, unfamiliar sorts of people. Such increased sensitivity makes it more difficult to marginalise people different from ourselves by thinking, "They do not feel as 'we' would," or "There must always be suffering, so why not let 'them' suffer?"
This process of coming to see other human beings as "one of us" rather than as "them" is a matter of detailed description of what unfamiliar people are like and of redescription of what we ourselves are like. This is a task not for theory but for genres such as ethnography, the journalist's report, the comic book, the docudrama, and, especially, the novel. Fiction like that of Dickens, Olive Schreiner, or Richard Wright give us the details about kinds of suffering being endured by people to whom we had previously not attended. Fiction like that of Choderlos de Laclos, Henry James, or Nabokov gives us the details about what sorts of cruelty we ourselves are capable of, and thereby lets us redescribe ourselves. That is why the novel, the movie, and the TV program have, ~ Richard M. Rorty

In 2008, Barack Obama did get Democrats hyperventilating, whipped up to a creamy froth, while John McCain creaked ahead like a cranky granddad whom Republicans let move to the front of the buffet line, deferring to seniority, as they had in 1996, when Bob Dole turtled to the top of the ticket. ~ James Wolcott

The notion of the world as a village is becoming a reality. ~ James Wolfensohn

Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind. ~ Henry James

I have six illegitimate children," Villiers informed her, not kindly. She visibly paled. :My daughter is marrying a duke," the duchess said between clenched teeth. "True, he apparently has the morals of a squirrel, but that's my cross to bear. ~ Eloisa James

Meeting external deadlines is much harder than meeting internal ones. On the other hand, internal deadlines sometimes don't feel real, and are therefore easy to evade. ~ James Surowiecki

Imitation, if it is not forgery, is a fine thing. It stems from a generous impulse, and a realistic sense of what can and cannot be done. ~ James Fenton

There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermingle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant usurpation. ~ James Madison

Oil production should peak out around the world in the early 1990s ... That means in five years' time we may have chewed up most of the possibility of further expansion of oil production. ~ James R. Schlesinger

I should tell you that honestly, on my honour of a Nearwicked, I always think in a wordworth's of that primed favourite continental poet, Daunty, Gouty and Shopkeeper, A.G., whom the generality admoyers in this that is and that this is to come. ~ James Joyce

You might have Bible verses on the wall in every room of the house and yet the unspoken rituals reinforce self-centeredness rather than sacrifice. Thus ~ James K.A. Smith

Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me. ~ William James

I blame it on Walt Disney, where animals are given human qualities. People don't understand that a wild animal is not something that is nice to pat. It can seriously harm you. ~ James Cameron

Humor is a bit like Mary Poppins' sugar-it helps the medicine go down. A little bit of humor allows people to think about very difficult subjects. ~ James Fadiman

Kay was only half skinny-dipping, but she fervently wished she'd worn something a bit more substantial than a baseball cap and the bottom half of the quintessential teeny-weenie yellow polka-dot bikini. ~ Babette James

The international proletariat first appeared on the scene in the early Thirties of the nineteenth century, and its first great action was the French Revolution of 1848. ~ C.L.R. James

The trouble with the lost generation is that it didn't get lost enough. ~ James Thurber

I don't know, I think the crowds are even more responsive now because the audiences are skewing younger. ~ James Young

The Jedi thought of the cellular organelles as symbionts, but to Plagueis midi-chlorians were interlopers, running interference for the Force and standing in the way of a being's ability to contact the Force directly. ~ James Luceno

Here's a freebie: Don't play poker with a kid who can read minds. ~ James Patterson

The house of fiction has in short not one window, but a million, ... but they are, singly, as nothing without the posted presence of the watcher. ~ Henry James

The French dine to gratify, we to appease appetite," observed John Sanderson. "We demolish dinner, they eat it." The general misconception back home was that French food was highly seasoned, but not at all, wrote James Fenimore Cooper. The genius in French cookery was "in blending flavors and in arranging compounds in such a manner as to produce ... the lightest and most agreeable food." The charm of a French dinner, like so much in French life, was the "effect. ~ David McCullough

As anger is a passing storm, so it comes not gradually and with signs, but like a sudden sweep of wind or black squall. ~ James Vila Blake

Experimental research, however, clearly shows that aluminum adjuvants have a potential to induce serious immunological disorders in humans. In particular, aluminum in adjuvant form carries a risk for autoimmunity, long-term brain inflammation and associated neurological complications […]."[109] ~ James Morcan

My boy, you are by blood, by appearance, by education, and by tastes a white man. Now, why do you want to throw your life away amidst the poverty and ignorance, in the hopeless struggle, of the black people of the United States? ~ James Weldon Johnson

As the gentleman decays, the lady survives as the strongest evidence of his former predominance. ~ Emily James Smith Putnam

My father also happened to be an intellectual, as learned, literate, informed, and curious as anyone I have known. Unobtrusively and casually, he was my wise and gentle teacher. ~ James Tobin

You're like a dull knife, just ain't cuttin', just talkin' loud and saying nothing ~ James Brown

Europe has what we do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a sense of life's possibilities. ~ James Baldwin

Prayer power is real. By putting it into action, we will be able to stay more constantly in higher awareness than ever before. If we can do that, the world will quickly change. ~ James Redfield

(Of Marilyn Monroe) She was good at being inarticulately abstracted for the same reason that midgets are good at being short ~ Clive James

Be courageous and face this moment in time consciously and with all the discernment and clarity within your power. ~ James O'Dea

The first test of ability and intelligence is to find a field of endeavor in which profits are large and risks small. ~ James Gould Cozzens

We have to continue at a high level and make them take tough shots. ~ LeBron James

Another way to describe the dilemma for religious faith is that pluralism creates social conditions in which God is no longer an inevitability. While it is possible to believe in God, one has to work much harder at it because the framework of belief is no longer present to sustain it. The presumption of God and of his active presence in the world cannot be easily sustained because the most important symbols of social, economic, political, and aesthetic life no longer point to him. God is simply less obvious than he once was, and for most no longer obvious at all - quite the opposite. ~ James Davison Hunter

When history textbooks leave out the Arawaks, they offend Native Americans. When they omit the possibility of African and Phoenician precursors to Columbus, they offend African Americans. When they glamorize explorers such as de Soto just because they were white, our histories offend all people of color. When they leave out Las Casas, they omit an interesting idealist with whom we all might identify. When they glorify Columbus, our textbooks prod us toward identifying with the oppressor. When textbook authors omit the causes and process of European world domination, they offer us a history whose purpose must be to keep us unaware of the important questions. Perhaps worst of all, when textbooks paint simplistic portraits of a pious, heroic Columbus, they provide feel-good history that bores everyone. ~ James W. Loewen