Three James Herriot Classics Quotes

“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.”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“No animal is a better judge of comfort than a cat”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“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, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“All young animals are appealing but the lamb has been given an unfair share of charm.”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“he devoted a considerable amount of his acute intelligence to the cause of doing as little as possible. Tristan did, in fact, spend much of his time sleeping in a chair.”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“Life was full for me. There were so many things to find out and a lot I had to prove to myself. The days were quick and challenging and they pressed on me with their very newness. But it all stopped here in the garden. Everything seemed to have stopped here a long time ago. I looked back before going through the door into the yard and it was like suddenly coming across a picture in an old book; the empty, wild garden and the tall, silent house beyond. I could never quite believe it was there and that I was a part of it.”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“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, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“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, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“Animals are unpredictable things so our whole 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, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“Siegfried once told me he had spent half a morning trying to stuff a uterus up a cow’s rectum. What really worried him, he said, was that he nearly succeeded)”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“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, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“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, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“own. I am sure that is what the family remembered best about me because of the way the mother’s letter began. “Dear Vet with the bandaged finger …”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“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.” As”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“mind. So much for Herriot as a judge of character. I couldn’t have been more wrong, but Paul had fought his secret battle with a courage which had deceived everybody.”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“on the back of the chair in an attempt to ease my internal turmoil. My stomach was a lake of volcanic lava bubbling and popping fiercely in its crater with each additional piece of onion, every sip of whisky setting up a fresh violent reaction. Watching Granville at work, a great wave of nausea swept over me. He was sawing busily at the roast, carving off slices which looked to be an inch thick, slapping mustard on them and enclosing them in the bread. He hummed with contentment as the pile”
― James Herriot, Three James Herriot Classics: Volume 1

“My mind went back to my school-days and an old gentleman talking to the class about careers. He had said: “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 laughed aloud in the darkness and as I got into the car I was still chuckling. That old chap certainly wasn’t kidding. Variety. That was it—variety.”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“This time, the seat went over quicker than usual and I hurtled backwards, coming to rest with my head among some Wellingtons and my knees tucked underneath my chin. A row of surprised faces peered in at me through the back window, but soon, willing hands were helping me up and the trick seat was placed upright on its rockers again. I wondered how long it had been like that and if my employer had ever thought of having it fixed. We”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“Though in her late thirties, she had no fears of spinsterhood because she had been assiduously courted for fifteen years by Charlie Hudson from the Darrowby fish shop and though Charlie was not a tempestuous suitor there was nothing flighty about him and he was confidently expected to pop the question over the next ten years or so. Mr.”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“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, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“clear-skinned”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“Well, I had fallen down on the job and an octogenarian farmer had wiped my eye with two gallons of strong ale. I didn’t feel great.”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“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, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“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, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“I can’t bear it, Mr. Herriot. He was like a Christian was that pig, just like a Christian.”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“around”
― James Herriot, Three James Herriot Classics: Volume 1

“After that first crowded day I retired to one of those green-tiled sanctuaries and lathered myself with a new bar of a famous toilet soap which Helen had put in my bag. 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. It was a dull, empty ache which never really went away.”
― James Herriot, Three James Herriot Classics: Volume 1

“when things weren’t going well he carried on long muttered conversations with himself, but when he was particularly pleased about something he was inclined to break into a loud, tuneless humming.”
― James Herriot, Three James Herriot Classics: Volume 1

“The two of us stood gazing at the gleaming rows without any idea that it was nearly all useless and that the days of the old medicines were nearly over. Soon they would be hustled into oblivion by the headlong rush of the new discoveries and they would never return.”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics

“And as I methodically trimmed the overgrown nails, wrathful bubbles escaped on either side of the bandage along with his splutterings. If dogs could swear I was getting the biggest cursing in history. I”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small / All Things Bright and Beautiful / All Things Wise and Wonderful: Three James Herriot Classics