Precisionist Horse Quotes

Though laughter is allowable, a horse-laugh is abominable. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

[I]n the American soul there is a lonely individual standing in a vast landscape. 
He is either on a horse or driving a car, depending, and either way he's carrying a gun. 
This is one of the essential images in American mythology. ~ Don DeLillo

my orderly, who threw me across a pack-horse, and succeeded in bringing me safely to the British lines. Worn with pain, and weak from the prolonged hardships ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

If you beat a dead horse long enough,
you will eventually kill it. ~ Maximus Freeman

I love horse racing, I play golf, and I love travelling. ~ Ian Rush

But what truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute-for horses ~ Jane Smiley

He is, as you say, a remarkable horse, a prodigious horse, although as you very justly observe, a suspicious and untractable character. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

There's a reason I've always relied on you for the necessary political miracles, Emily," Hamish told her with a smile. "Give me a fleet problem, or a naval battle to fight, and I "know exactly what to do. But dealing with scum like High Ridge and Descroix - ?" He shook his head. "I just can't wrap my mind around how to handle them."
"Be honest, dear," Emily corrected him gently. "It's not that you really can't do it, and you know it. It's that you get so furious with them that you wind up climbing onto your high moral horse so you can ride them under the hooves of your righteous fury. But when you close your knight errant's helmet, the visibility through that visor is just a little limited, isn't it? ~ David Weber

My horses make very silly faces when I'm preparing their meals. ~ Martin Clunes

1) Work on one thing at a time until finished.
2) Start no more new books, add no more new material to "Black Spring."
3) Don't be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
4) Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
5) When you can't create you can work.
6) Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
7) Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
8) Don't be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
9) Discard the Program when you feel like it - but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
10) Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
11) Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards. ~ Henry Miller

I checked Delores, she appeared to be running on a lake top, a girl on a fairy horse sprinting across fresh water. As I looked, Delores let go of the bay's mane and sat straight up, riding only with her legs and hips, her arms out as if to fly. She tilted her head back, too, and she looked so perfect doing it that I didn't dare try to copy her. This was something only for her, something I could only witness, and she galloped down that hill with her soul somewhere up in the sky above her. We both knew it, and we never had to mention it. T ~ Joseph Monninger

I dont' like talking to horses because they are naysayers ~ Pat Sajak

Money, horse racing and women: three things the boys just can't figure out. ~ Will Rogers

Top Trumps appeared to be a game in which you got cards, and the cards had a picture (in this case, of a horse), and told you all kinds of stats for that horse, how fast it was, how big it was, etc. Whoever had the better horse won both the cards. You repeated this until someone had all the cards. So, basically it was exactly like high school, except it only took three minutes. Which was really a bit more humane, if you thought about it. ~ Maureen Johnson

The horse was panting, hanging its head. I hugged its head to my breast and saw that there were tears in its large eyes. I noticed a round black wound on its belly. "Why did not you tell me?" I whispered, crying. "My dearest, I did it for you," the horse said and became very small, like a wooden toy. I left him and felt wonderfully light and happy. ~ Bruno Schulz

The North African mule talks always of his mother's brother, the horse, but never of his father, the donkey, in favor of others supposedly more reputable. ~ Clifford Geertz

How To Make A Human

Take the cat out of the sphinx
and what is left? Riddle Me That.

Take the horse from the centaur
and you take away the sleek grace,
the strength of harnessed power.
What is left can still run across fields,
after a fashion, but is easily winded;
what is left will therefore erect buildings
to divide the open plains so he no longer
must face the wide expanse where once
his equine legs raced the winds
and, sometimes, won.

Take the bull from the Minotaur
but what is left will still assemble
a herd for the sake of ruling over it.
What is left will kill for sport,
in an arena thronged with spectators
shouting "Ole" at each deadly thrust.

Take the fish from the Merman:
What is left can still swim,
if only with lots of splashing; gone
is the sleek sliding through the waves,
alert to the subtle changes in the current.
What is left will build ships
so he can cross the oceans without
getting his feet wet, what is left won't care
if his boats pollute the seas he can no
longer breathe so long as their passage
can keep him from sinking.

Take the goat from the satyr
but what is left will dance out of reach
before you have the chance
to get that Dionysian streak of myschief,
the love of music and wine, the rutting parts
that like to party all th ~ Lawrence Schimel

Books on horse racing subjects have never done well, and I am told that publishers had come to think of them as the literary version of box office poison. ~ Laura Hillenbrand

Horse: Wood like you were sporting usually implies the opposite. Unless it was for me? If that's the case, I'm genuinely flattered. No judgements. ~ Joanna Wylde

When one makes sculptures of horses, one remembers all of that great relationship that humans had with them ... Even today one raises horses only for dressage, the races, for the pleasure of horseback riding. It has become an animal of romance, an animal of pleasure which has lost its utility in the West. ~ Joe Fafard

Possession properly has two faces, two aspects: we all have a right to private property, but this is accompanied by our responsibility for its righteous use. These two things (which should be inseparable) are frequently divided today. Everyone admits that the farmer who own a horse is obligated to feed and care for it, but in the case of stocks and bonds, we often forget that the same principle should prevail. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country's champion, the Moore of Moore Hall, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest? ~ Henry David Thoreau

PANOTII LOOKS PUT OUT ABOUT BEING LEFT BEHIND AND dogs my steps as I stow his tack under the deep overhang on the south side of the wizard's hovel. There's plenty of grass here, water at the lake, and it's not that cold yet, despite the shift in seasons. If the rains start before we get back, the horses can take shelter under the overhang. I'm not worried about them wandering off. Not one of them has stepped outside of the large makeshift corral of God Bolt pits since we got here.

"You can't come with us," I tell him. "It'll be cold and slippery. And big monsters will want to eat you." He tosses his head, snorting. "Really big monsters. There might be Dragons. And the Hydra. And I can't vouch for the friendliness of the Ipotane toward regular horses." I blow gently into his nose. Panotii chuffs back. "You'll be safe here, and if anyone tries to steal you, Grandpa Zeus will throw down a thunderbolt. Boom! No more horse thief."

"Zeus may have better things to do than babysit our horses," Flynn says, stowing his own equine gear next to mine.

I glance northward toward the Gods' mountain home and speak loudly. "In that case, I'm announcing right now that I'll make an Olympian stink if anything happens to my horse." Flynn looks nervous and moves away from me like he's expecting a God Bolt to come thundering down.

"She's not kidding." Sunlight glints off Griffin's windblown hair. Thick black stubble darkens his jaw. He flashes me a smi ~ Amanda Bouchet

I still subscribe to the minority view that all horses are offensive weapons and not to be trusted a yard. ~ M.M. Kaye

People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band. ~ Charles Portis

Couldn't I come along with you? I've been trapped inside for days now and I need some sunshine and exercise. If you're really busy today, maybe I could hhelp. It's not as if I'm a greenhorn who'd get in your way."
"This isn't a good idea, Freckles, and you know it."
The feisty redhead grinned. "I admit I'm somewhat ignorant on the subject, but I've never heard of doing "it" on the back of a horse."
A roguish grin dangled from the corner of his mouth. "Sweetheart, you'd be surprised where...Never mind."
Though he'd tried to sound gruff, Willow detected a slight wavering in his determination. "I'll promise not to attack your body, if that's what you're worried about." She started laughing.
Moving closer, she backed him against the door. Then tilting her head, she hit him full force with her big blue-green sparklers. Her lips parted in a very seductive, very naughty smile.
"Please, just a short ride?" She toyed with the edge of his black leather vest, the backs of her fingers sliding up and down his chest.
Rider sucked in a gulp of air. "Dammit, woman,what's Mrs. Brigham been teaching you? Stop that!" He batted her hand away, laughing despite himself. He was beaten and he knew it.
"Well?" She smiled slyly.
He grasped her arms and set her away to a safer distance. "All right, all right. I give up. I'll take you for a ride." When her face lit up,he raised a cautioning finger and hastened to add, "On one condition. You have to keep your ~ Charlotte McPherren

Well, if a horse refuses, you've phrased your question wrongly. It's the same with women. Don't ask them, 'Shall we go out to dinner?' Ask: 'What can I cook for you?' Can she say not to that? No, she can't. ~ Nina George

A burro is an ass. A burrow is a hole in the ground. A reporter should know the difference. ~ Fred Reed

Grom-gil-Gorm," she said softly as she rode between Laithlin and Yarvi. "Breaker of Swords." Mother Isriun's horse shied back out of her way. "Maker of Orphans." Thorn reined in beside him, his frowning face lit red by the blazing light of her elf-bangle, and she leaned from her saddle to whisper.
"Your death comes. ~ Joe Abercrombie

Suddenly the nickel-clad horse takes the bit in its mouth and goes slanting for the curbstone defying all prayers and all your powers to change its mind - your heart stands still, your breath hangs fire, your legs forget to work. ~ Mark Twain

Another leading senator that I degraded was Caligula's horse Incitatus who was to have become Consul three years later. I wrote to the Senate that I had no complaints to make against the private morals of this senator or his capacity for the tasks that had hitherto been assigned to him, but that he no longer had the necessary financial qualifications. For I had cut the pension awarded him by Caligula to the daily rations of a cavalry horse, dismissed his grooms and put him into an ordinary stable where the manger was of wood, not ivory, and the walls were whitewashed, not covered with frescoes. I did not, however, separate him from his wife, the mare Penelope: that would have been unjust. ~ Robert Graves