Quotes from James Herriot

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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 having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans. You've nothing to worry about there.

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.

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

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.

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.

Everybody was asleep. Everybody except me, James Herriot, creeping sore and exhausted towards another spell of hard labour. Why the hell had I ever decided to become a country vet? I must have been crazy to pick a job where you worked seven days a week and through the night as well. Sometimes I felt as though the practice was a malignant, living entity; testing me, trying me out; putting the pressure on more and more to see just when at what point I would drop down dead.

When all t'world goes one road, I go t'other.

No animal is a better judge of comfort than a cat

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

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.

It was to a moribund horse, and Mr. Sidlow, describing the treatment to date, announced that he had been pushing raw onions up the horse's rectum; he couldn't understand why it was so uneasy on its legs. Siegfried had pointed out that if he were to insert a raw onion in Mr. Sidlow's rectum, he, Mr. Sidlow, would undoubtedly be uneasy on his legs.

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

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.

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

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.