Best 29 quotes of James Herriot on MyQuotes

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.

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

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.

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.

Dogs like to obey. It gives them security.

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.

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

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

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 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 ...[they] are an obligation put on us, a responsibility we have no right to neglect, nor to violate by cruelty.

If I had been a little dog I'd have gone leaping and gambolling around the room wagging my tail furiously.

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

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.

I love writing about my job because I loved it, and it was a particularly interesting one when I was a young man. It was like holidays with pay to me.

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

I think it was the beginning of Mrs. Bond's unquestioning faith in me when she saw me quickly enveloping the cat till all you could see of him was a small black and white head protruding from an immovable cocoon of cloth. He and i were now facing each other, more or less eyeball to eyeball, and George couldn't do a thing about it. As i say, I rather pride myself on this little expertise, and even today my veterinary colleagues have been known to remark, "Old Herriot may be limited in many respects, but by God he can wrap a cat.

It was Sunday morning (one a.m.), a not unusual time for some farmers, after a late Saturday night, to have a look round their stock and decide to send for the vet.

I was helped by having a verbatim memory of what happened years ago, even if I can't remember what happened a couple of days ago.

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

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

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.

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.

There was no last animal I treated. When young farm lads started to help me over the gate into a field or a pigpen, to make sure the old fellow wouldn't fall, I started to consider retiring.

He devoted a considerable amount of his acute intelligence to the cause of doing as little as possible.

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.

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.

Parents are never sure that they have done the right thing. They can only do what they think is right.

Sometimes in our job you feel you just can't win. If you take too long you're no good, if you're too quick the visit wasn't necessary.

There has always been a 'and this is where I come in' feeling about a night call. And as my lights swept the cobbles of the deserted market place it was there again, a sense of returning to fundamentals, of really being me.