Top 90 James Herriot Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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.”

— James Herriot

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

— James Herriot

53. “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

54. “There have been times in my life when, confronted by black and hopeless circumstances, I have discovered in myself undreamed-of resources of courage and resolution.”

— James Herriot

55. “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

56. “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

57. “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

58. “Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.”

— James Herriot

59. “I overheard one youngster asking another: “Has he grilled you on the causes of fits in calves yet? Don’t worry, he will.” That made me feel suddenly old but there was compensation on another occasion when a newly qualified ex-student rushed up to me and offered to buy me all the beer I could drink. “You know what the examiner asked me in the final oral? The causes of fits in calves! By God I paralysed him – he had to beg me to stop talking.” And.”

— James Herriot

60. “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

61. “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

62. “He must have kicked the door open because it flew back viciously against the rubber stop and rebounded almost into his face.”

— James Herriot

63. “They had a toughness and a philosophical attitude which was new to me. Misfortunes which would make the city dweller want to bang his head against a wall were shrugged off with “Aye, well, these things.”

— James Herriot

64. “Caution is often a virtue, but in your case you carry it too far. It’s a little flaw in your character and it shows in a multitude of ways. In your wary approach to problems in your work for instance, you are always too apprehensive, proceeding fearfully step by step when you should be plunging boldly ahead. You keep seeing dangers when there aren’t any, you’ve got to learn to take a chance, to lash out a bit. As it is, you are confined to a narrow range of activity by your own doubts.”

— James Herriot

65. “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

66. “When they rolled into Darrowby in the small hours most of the occupants of the bus were unconscious.”

— James Herriot

67. “Bernard’s had ’is hand.”

— James Herriot

68. “As soon as I got hold of the teats I could see.”

— James Herriot

69. “I found that the fear is worse than the reality and horse work has never worried me as much since then.”

— James Herriot

70. “Northern Pennines.”

— James Herriot

71. “Then the nose moved along the rubber tube up to the bottle and back again, sniffing with the utmost concentration. When I removed the needle the nose began a careful inspection of the injection site. Then a tongue appeared and began to lick the bullock’s neck methodically. I squatted back on my heels and watched. This was something more than mere curiosity; everything in the dog’s attitude suggested intense interest and concern.”

— James Herriot

72. “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.”

— James Herriot

73. “Gently I pointed out that it should be “sheep,” and though he was so tired that he could hardly keep his eyes open, he launched into an interrogation as to why the singular should be the same as the plural and wanted to know all the other English words which had this peculiarity.”

— James Herriot

74. “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

75. “To say I had a hangover next morning would be failing even to hint at the utter disintegration of my bodily economy and personality. Only somebody who had consumed two or three quarts of assorted home made wines at a sitting could have an inkling of the quaking nausea, the raging inferno within, the jangling nerves, the black despairing outlook.”

— James Herriot

76. “It was all that was left of a man’s dream.”

— James Herriot

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

— James Herriot

78. “I was really sloshing around in my trough of self-pity.”

— James Herriot

79. “I looked again at the dog and saw in his eyes only a calm trust. Some dogs would have barked their heads off and soon been discovered, some would have become terrified and vicious, but this was one of the totally undemanding kind, the kind which had complete faith in people and accepted all their actions without complaint.”

— James Herriot

80. “That ewe’s life had been saved not by medicinal therapy but simply by stopping her pain and allowing nature to do its own job of healing. It was a lesson I have never forgotten; the animals confronted with severe continuous pain and the terror and shock that goes with it will often retreat even into death, and if you can remove that pain amazing things can happen. It is difficult to explain rationally but I know that it is so.”

— James Herriot

81. “I only half realised at the time how lucky I was. I had a demanding, round-the-clock job, and yet I had the company of my children at the same time. So many men work so hard to keep the home going that they lose touch with the families who are at the heart of it, but it never happened to me. Both Jimmy and Rosie, until they went to school, spent most of their time with me round the farms.”

— James Herriot

82. “Often, too, they would slip half a.”

— James Herriot

83. “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

84. “Rage flooded through me like a draught of strong spirit. The right thing to do, of course, would be to get up, tip the bucket of bloody water over Uncle’s head, run down the hill and drive away; away from Yorkshire, from Uncle, from the Dinsdales, from this cow.”

— James Herriot

85. “The clever economists who tell us that we don’t need British agriculture and that our farms should be turned into national parks seem to ignore the rather obvious snag that an unfriendly country could starve us into submission in a week. But to me a greater tragedy still would be the loss of a whole community of people like.”

— James Herriot

86. “I have children of my own.” And then he spoke the words that have become engraven on my heart. “You need nerves of steel to be a parent.”

— James Herriot

87. “Fred had trocharised a bloated cow and the farmer had been so impressed by the pent up gas hissing from the abdomen that Fred had got carried away and applied his cigarette lighter to the canula. A roaring sheet of flame had swept on to some straw bales and burned the byre to the ground.”

— James Herriot

88. “There wasn’t much of her, in fact she must have been one of the smallest women I have ever seen – around five feet high – but there was a core of steel in her. She had her own mind and her own way of doing things.”

— James Herriot

89. “And for me it was a wonderful time and I marvelled at my luck. So many men with high-pressure jobs see very little of their families but I had it both ways with my little son and daughter so often at my side as I worked.”

— James Herriot

90. “But I was beginning to realise that life was not a tidy little parcel at any time.”

— James Herriot

91. “Cuando todo el mundo sigue por un camino, yo cojo el otro.”

— James Herriot

92. “Looking back, I realise it was one of the bravest things I have ever done.”

— James Herriot

93. “The old man looked me over, piercingly. “My vet is Mr. Broomfield. Expect you’ll have heard of him – everybody knows him, I reckon. Wonderful man, Mr. Broomfield, especially at calving. Do you know, I’ve never seen ’im beat yet.”

— James Herriot

94. “It was still quite early in the morning and perhaps I wasn’t feeling quite strong enough to have the evidence of my failure thrust before my eyes.”

— James Herriot

95. “She was too good a cook and I was too faithful a disciple of her art.”

— James Herriot

96. “It took me longer than I thought and it seemed to me that the calf was beginning to lose patience with me because when its head was forced out by the cow’s contractions we were eye to eye and I fancied the little creature was giving me a disgusted “For heaven’s sake get on with it” look.”

— James Herriot