Anna

“For all that, they capered around John with a fair attempt at skittishness, stamping their feet, throwing their heads about, pushing his cap over his eyes with their muzzles.
“Get by, leave off!” he shouted. “Daft awd beggars.” But he tugged absently at the mare’s forelock and ran his hand briefly along the neck of the gelding.
“When did they last do any work?” I asked.
“Oh, about twelve years ago, I reckon.”
I stared at John. “Twelve years! And have they been down here all that time?”
“Aye; just lakin’ about down here, retired like. They’ve earned it an’ all.” For a few moments he stood silent, shoulders hunched, hands deep in the pockets of his coat, then he spoke quietly as if to himself. “They were two slaves when I was a slave.” He turned and looked at me and for a revealing moment I read in the pale blue eyes something of the agony and struggle he had shared with the animals.

...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.”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small

“Her finely-touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which have no great name on earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“Taint what a horse looks like, it’s what a horse be.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul”
― Victor Hugo , Les Misérables