Here is our list of 50 amazing and inspiring quotes that will challenge your thinking on horse training and horse behaviour forever 🙂
There is just as much horse sense as ever, but the horses have most of it.
Anonymous
A horse is the most honest creature in the world – if she’s doing something wrong, it’s probably because you told her to!
Anonymous
What you must always remember, no matter how angry you are, is that rewards teach the horse, not the consequences.
Anonymous
For a horse to trust you, you must trust the horse.
Anonymous
Your horse’s behavior always seems to depend on the number of people watching you.
Anonymous
A stubborn horse walks behind you, an impatient horse walks in front of you, but a noble companion walks beside you.
Anonymous
Tell a gelding. Ask a stallion. Discuss it with a mare.
Anonymous
Horse sense, n.: Stable thinking.
Anonymous
In dealing with a girl or a horse, one lets nature take it’s course.
Fred Astaire, Top-Hat
But if a rider teach his horse to go with the bridle loose, he would thus lead him to do everything in pleasure and pride.
John Astley
A horse is the matter and subject whereupon the art worketh, and is a creature sensible, and therefore so far as he is moved to do any thing, he is thereunto moved by sense and feeling. Further, this is common to all sensible creatures, to shun all things as annoy them, and to like all such things as do delight them.
John Astley
Did you ever see an unhappy horse? Did you ever see a bird that has the blues? One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses.
Dale Carnegie
Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.
Dale Carnegie
Horses have never hurt anyone yet, except when they bet on them.
Stuart Cloete
Never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear or a fool from any direction.
Cowboy Proverb
Horses are so forgiving.
Tom Dorrance
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
W.C. Fields
It is the difficult horses that have the most to give you.
Lendon Gray
If training has not made a horse more beautiful, nobler in carriage, more attentive in his behavior, revealing pleasure in his own accomplishment, then he has not truly been schooled in dressage.
Colonel Handler
Half the failures of this world arise from pulling in one’s horse as he is leaping.
Augustus Hare
They say princes learn no art truly but the art of horsemanship. The reason is the brave beast is no flatterer. He will throw a prince as soon as his groom.
Ben Jonson, Discoveries Made upon Men and Matter and Some Poems, “Illiteratus Princeps”
A horse may be coaxed to drink, but a pencil must be lead.
Stan Laurel
No one can teach riding so well as a horse.
C. S. Lewis
Honor lies in the mane of a horse.
Herman Melville
A Hibernian sage once wrote that there are three things a man never forgets: The girl of his early youth, a devoted teacher, and a great horse.
C. J. J. Mullen
To learn all that a horse could teach, was a world of knowledge, but only a beginning. …
Look into a horse’s eye and you instantly know if you can trust him.
Mary O’Hara
The willing horse should not be spurred.
Old Gaelic proverb
If your horse says no, you either asked the wrong question or asked the question wrong.
Pat Parelli
Cause your ideas to become your horse’s ideas, but understand his ideas first.
Pat Parelli
We shall take great care not to annoy the horse and spoil his friendly charm, for it is like the scent of a blossom—once lost it will never return.
Pluvinel
If a horse becomes more beautiful in the course of his work, it is a sign that the training principles are correct.
Colonel Podhajsky
A horse loves freedom, and the weariest old workhorse will roll on the ground or break into a lumbering gallop when he is turned loose into the open.
Gerald Raferty
A horseman should know neither fear nor anger.
James Rarey
When you reason with a horse, he’ll participate because he wants to, not because he’s forced to.
Monty Roberts
I believe that none of us was born with the right to say, “You must or I’ll hurt you.”
Monty Roberts
If you act like you’ve only got fifteen minutes, and it’ll take all day. Act like you’ve got all day, and it’ll take fifteen minutes.
Monty Roberts
A good trainer can hear a horse speak to him. A great trainer can hear him whisper.
Monty Roberts
There are many types of bits for many different disciplines, but the severity of all bits lies in the hands holding them.
Monte Roberts
Horses and children, I often think, have a lot of the good sense there is in the world.
Josephine Demott Robinson
You know horses are smarter than people. You never heard of a horse going broke betting on people.
Will Rogers
Whoever said a horse was dumb was dumb.
Will Rogers
You cannot train a horse with shouts and expect it to obey a whisper.
Dagobert D. Runes
Hard is to teach an old horse amble true.
Edmund Spenser
The strong-neck’d steed, being tied unto a tree,
Breaketh his rein, and to her straight goes he.
Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds,
And now his woven girths he breaks asunder;
The bearing earth with his hard hoof he wounds,
Whose hollow womb resounds like heaven’s thunder;
The iron bit he crushes ’tween his teeth,
Controlling what he was controlled with.
William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis (274-81)
A horse gallops with its lungs, perseveres with its heart, and wins with its character.
Tessio
As a horse runs, think of it as a game of tag with the wind.
Tre Tuberville
The truth is that horses exhibit, in an exaggerated form, many of the worst characteristics of people. They are greedy, envious, spiteful, malicious, slothful, superstitious, and stupid. They are congenital hysterics and each one is, ominously, a prospective homicide. If horses could talk, they would lie.
Owen Ulph, The Fiddleback: Lore of the Line Camp
If a dancer was forced to dance by whips and spikes, He would be no more beautiful than a horse trained under the similar conditions.
Xenophon
The one best precept-the golden rule in dealing with a horse—is never to approach him angrily. Anger is so devoid of forethought that it will often drive a man to do things which in a calmer mood he will regret.
Xenophon
If one induces the horse to assume that carriage which it would adopt of its own accord when displaying its beauty, then, one directs the horse to appear joyous and magnificent, proud and remarkable for having been ridden.
Xenophon
The horse will leap over trenches, will jump out of them, will do anything else, provided one grants him praise and respite after his accomplishment.
Xenophon
