At its finest, rider and horse are joined not by tack, but by trust. Each is totally reliant upon the other. Each is the selfless guardian of the other’s very well-being.
Anonymous
The horse you get off is not the same as the horse you got on. It is your job as a rider to ensure that, as often as possible, the change is for the better.
Anonymous
The world is best viewed through the ears of a horse.
Anonymous
I’ve spent most of my life riding horses. The rest I’ve just wasted.
Anonymous
Riding: The art of keeping a horse between you and the ground.
Anonymous
Put some excitement between you legs: ride a horse.
Anonymous
To ride a horse is to ride the sky.
Anonymous
Feeling down? Saddle up.
Anonymous
When the horse dies, dismount.
Anonymous
A horse can lend its rider the speed and strength he or she lacks, but the rider who is wise remembers it is no more than a loan.
Pam Brown
If the world was truly a rational place, men would ride sidesaddle.
Rita Mae Brown
Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!
Robert Browning
The ass will carry his load, but not a double load; ride not a free horse to death.
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
Good people get cheated, just as good horses get ridden.
Chinese Proverb
When you are on a great horse, you have the best seat you will ever have.
Winston Churchill
No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle.
Winston Churchill
Speak your mind, but ride a fast horse.
Cowboy Proverb
All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.
e. e. cummings
No ride is ever the last one. No horse is ever the last one you will have. Somehow, there will always be other horses, other places to ride them.
Monica Dickens
A canter is a cure for every evil.
Benjamin Disraeli
A horse which stops dead just before a jump and thus propels its rider into a graceful arc provides a splendid excuse for general merriment.
Duke of Edinburgh
A good horse makes short miles.
George Elliot
Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of Solitaire. It is a grand passion.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It’s a lot like nuts and bolts—if the rider’s nuts, the horse bolts!
Nicholas Evans
Horses are uncomfortable in the middle and dangerous at both ends.
Attributed to both Ian Fleming and Christopher Stone
A little neglect may breed mischief…
for want of a nail the shoe was lost;
for want of a shoe the horse was lost;
and for want of a horse, the rider was lost…
being overtaken and slain by the enemy,
all for want of care about a horseshoe nail.
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack
If you ride a horse, sit close and tight, If you ride a man, sit easy and light.
Benjamin Franklin
Most nations, free ones especially, should be dealt with like a spirited horse, whom a judicious rider will keep steady, by maintaining an exact balance in his seat, showing neither fear nor cruelty, occasionally giving and checking with the rein, while he prudently and resolutely corrects with the spur, or kindly blandishes with his hand.
Francis Gentleman, “A Trip to the Moon”
Thou must learn the thoughts of the noble horse
Whom thou wouldst ride.
Be not indiscreet in thy demands,
Nor require him to perform indiscreetly.
Johanne Wolfgang von Goethe
We have almost forgotten how strange a thing it is that so huge and powerful and intelligent an animal as a horse should allow another, and far more feeble animal, to ride upon its back.
Peter Gray
If you’re a cowboy and you’re dragging a guy behind your horse, I bet it would really make you mad if you looked back and the guy was reading a magazine.
Jack Handy, Deep Thoughts
A good rider on a good horse is as much above himself and others as the world can make him. Lord Herbert
I prefer a bike to a horse. The brakes are more easily checked.
Lambert Jeffries
There are many wonderful places in the world, but one of my favorite places is on the back of my horse.
Rolf Kopfle
The horse knows how to be a horse if we will leave him alone… but the riders don’t know how to ride. What we should be doing is creating riders and that takes care of the horse immediately.
Charles de Kunffy
He flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.
Stephen Leacock
It takes a good deal of physical courage to ride a horse. This, however, I have. I get it at about forty cents a flask, and take it as required.
Stephen Leacock
There are no handles to a horse, but the 1910 model has a string to each side of its face for turning its head when there is something you want it to see.
Stephen Leacock, “Reflections on Riding”
No one can teach riding so well as a horse.
C.S. Lewis
There are only two emotions that belong in the saddle; one is a sense of humor and the other is patience.
John Lyons
People on horses look better than they are. People in cars look worse than they are.
Marya Mannes
There is a secret pleasing and cherishing of the horse with the bridle, which the rider must accomplish with so unperceiving a motion that none but the beast may know it.
Gervase Markham
It is not enough for a man to know how to ride; he must know how to fall.
Mexican Proverb
If riding were all blue ribbons and bright lights, I would have quit long ago.
George Morris
Certain comic effects can be achieved by a brand-new rider, especially a man who dresses like a fashion model and rides like a tailor.
C. J. J. Mullen
Experienced riders are not prone to brag. And usually newcomers, if they start out being boastful, end up modest.
C. J. J. Mullen
Men are better when riding, more just and more understanding, and more alert and more at ease and more under-taking, and better knowing of all countries and all passages; in short and long all good customs and manners cometh thereof, and the health of man and of his soul.
Attributed to Edward Plantagenet
The rider who rests content with imitations of beauty finds his horses going crazy, although sometimes not violently enough to be noticed.
Colonel Podhajsky
Riding is a partnership. The horse lends you his strength, speed and grace, which are greater than yours. For your part you give him your guidance, intelligence and understanding, which are greater than his. Together you can achieve a richness that alone neither can.
Lucy Rees
First, you must trust in yourself. Then you can also trust in the earth or gravity of a situation, and because of that, you can uplift yourself. At that point, your discipline becomes delightful rather than being an ordeal or a great demand. When you ride a horse, balance comes, not from freezing your legs to the saddle, but from learning to float with the movement of the horse as you ride. Each step is a dance, the rider’s dance as well as the dance of the horse.
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, “Shambala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior”
When you’re young and you fall off a horse, you may break something. When you’re my age and you fall off, you splatter.
Roy Rogers
There is something about riding down the street on a prancing horse that makes you feel like something, even when you ain’t a thing.
Will Rogers
Don’t be the rider who gallops all night and never sees the horse that is beneath him
Jelaluddin Rumi
Spending that many hours in the saddle gave a man plenty of time to think. That’s why so many cowboys fancied themselves Philosophers.
Charles M. Russell
The horse, with beauty unsurpassed, strength immeasurable, and grace unlike any other, still remains humble enough to carry a man upon his back.
Amber Senti
When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; … He is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him, but only in patient stillness while his rider mounts him; he is indeed a horse, and all other jades you may call beasts.
William Shakespeare, Henry V
A man on a horse is spiritually as well as physically bigger than a man on foot.
John Steinbeck
There is no secret so close as that between a rider and his horse.
Robert Smith Surtees
In riding a horse, we borrow freedom.
Helen Thomson
That hoss wasn’t built to tread the earth,
He took natural to the air,
And every time he went aloft,
He tried to leave me there.
Anonymous Tribute to an Unmanageable Horse
If I had a horse, I’d ride off in the sunset, where dreams and shadows lie. To a life, where pain and sorrow don’t exist, and to where hopes, and dreams become reality.
Lindsay Turcotte
Again the early-morning sun was generous with its warmth. All the sounds dear to a horseman were around me—the snort of the horses as they cleared their throats, the gentle swish of their tails, the tinkle of irons as we flung the saddles over their backs—little sounds of no importance, but they stay in the unconscious library of memory.
Wynford Vaughan-Thomas
On the back of a horse, you will find Paradise.
Stella A. Walker
There are fools, damn fools, and those who remount in a steeplechase.
Bill Whitbread
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
