Top 51 Herriot Quotes
#1. 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
#2. Old Herriot may be limited in some respects, but by God, he can wrap a cat.
James Herriot
#3. I never had a favourite book! I liked all kinds of things - science fiction, so I read Heinlen and Ray Bradbury, and I also liked reading about kids like myself, so I read Judy Blume and Norma Klein and Paula Danzinger and a lot of other writers. I also read James Herriot!
Rebecca Stead
#4. I can't bear it, Mr. Herriot. He was like a Christian was that pig, just like a Christian.
James Herriot
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. Why had I entered this profession? I could have gone in for something easier and gentler - like coalmining or lumberjacking.
James Herriot
#10. He loved the stuff. But unfortunately he couldn't say "Propamidine." In fact nobody on the entire establishment could say it except Charlie the farm foreman and he only thought he could say it. He called it "Propopamide" but his lordship had the utmost faith in him.
James Herriot
#11. 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.
James Herriot
#12. 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
#13. 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.
James Herriot
#14. But cruel fate had not finished with us yet. My colleague's gasps and grunts from the rear ceased for a moment to be replaced by a horrified shriek. The bloody thing's shitting, Jim! She's shitting everywhere!
James Herriot
#15. without warning, the thermometer disappeared from my fingers. Some sudden suction had drawn it inside the cow. I ran my fingers round just inside the rectum - nothing; I pushed my hand inside without success; with a feeling of rising panic I rolled up my sleeve and groped about in vain.
James Herriot
#16. 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
#17. The dog did not move as the needle was inserted, and, as the barbiturate began to flow into the vein, the anxious expression left his face and the muscles began to relax. By the time the injection was finished, the breathing had stopped.
James Herriot
#18. No animal is a better judge of comfort than a cat ...
James Herriot
#20. 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
#23. 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.
James Herriot
#24. 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
#25. 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.
James Herriot
#26. 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
#27. Politics is like a race horse. A good jockey must know how to fall with the least possible damage.
Edouard Herriot
#29. I pulled a packet of Cold Flake from my pocket. "Cliff, you're a marvel. Will you have a cigarette?" "It 'ud be like givin' a pig a strawberry," the little man replied,
James Herriot
#30. I freely admit that I have many times adopted Jim Oakley's precept of a "bloody good gallop," often with spectacular results. To this day I frequently learn things from farmers, but that was one time when I learned from a postman.
James Herriot
#31. 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
#32. And I could find other excuses to get out and sit on the crisp grass and look out over the airy roof of Yorkshire. It was like taking time out of life. Time to get things into perspective and assess my progress.
James Herriot
#33. 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
#34. And the peace which I always found in the silence and emptiness of the moors filled me utterly
James Herriot
#35. If a farmer calls me to a sick animal, he couldn't care less if I were George Bernard Shaw.
James Herriot
#36. I wish people would realize that animals are totally dependent on us, helpless, like children, a trust that is put upon us.
James Herriot
#37. They can't find my house now because I keep it very quiet where I live.
James Herriot
#38. 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
#39. I became a connoisseur of that nasty thud a manuscript makes when it comes through the letter box.
James Herriot
#40. 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
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. I could do terrible things to people who dump unwanted animals by the roadside.
James Herriot
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. 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.
James Herriot
#47. Came in elegant white cartons, so much more impressive than
James Herriot
#48. He devoted a considerable amount of his acute intelligence to the cause of doing as little as possible.
James Herriot
#49. For years I used to bore my wife over lunch with stories about funny incidents.
James Herriot
#50. 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
#51. I think it was the fact that I liked it so much that made the writing just come out of me automatically.
James Herriot
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