← After the horses came Muriel, the white goat, and Benjamin, the donkey. Benjamin was the oldest animal on the farm, and the worst tempered. 🔊
← This single farm of ours would support a dozen horses, twenty cows, hundreds of sheep−and all of them living in a comfort and a dignity that are now almost beyond our imagining. 🔊
← To that horror we all must come−cows, pigs, hens, sheep, everyone. Even the horses and the dogs have no better fate. 🔊
← The cows lowed it, the dogs whined it, the sheep bleated it, the horses whinnied it, the ducks quacked it. 🔊
← Snowball also threw on to the fire the ribbons with which the horses' manes and tails had usually been decorated on market days. 🔊
← As for the horses, they knew every inch of the field, and in fact understood the business of mowing and raking far better than Jones and his men had ever done. 🔊
← Boxer and Clover would harness themselves to the cutter or the horse−rake (no bits or reins were needed in these days, of course) and tramp steadily round and round the field with a pig walking behind and calling out "Gee up, comrade!" 🔊
← Boxer was the admiration of everybody. He had been a hard worker even in Jones's time, but now he seemed more like three horses than one; there were days when the entire work of the farm seemed to rest on his mighty shoulders. 🔊
← This was just what Snowball had intended. As soon as they were well inside the yard, the three horses, the three cows, and the rest of the pigs, who had been lying in ambush in the cowshed, suddenly emerged in their rear, cutting them off. 🔊
← It consisted of a brass medal (they were really some old horse−brasses which had been found in the harness−room), to be worn on Sundays and holidays. 🔊
← The animals lashed ropes round these, and then all together, cows, horses, sheep, any animal that could lay hold of the rope−even the pigs sometimes joined in at critical moments−they dragged them with desperate slowness up the slope to the top of the quarry, where they were toppled over the edge, to shatter to pieces below. 🔊
← "A horse's lungs do not last for ever," she said to him. But Boxer would not listen. 🔊
← At the beginning, when the laws of Animal Farm were first formulated, the retiring age had been fixed for horses and pigs at twelve, for cows at fourteen, for dogs at nine, for sheep at seven, and for hens and geese at five. 🔊
← For a horse, it was said, the pension would be five pounds of corn a day and, in winter, fifteen pounds of hay, with a carrot or possibly an apple on public holidays. 🔊
← At the appointed time the animals would leave their work and march round the precincts of the farm in military formation, with the pigs leading, then the horses, then the cows, then the sheep, and then the poultry. 🔊
← At this moment the man on the box whipped up his horses and the van moved out of the yard at a smart trot. 🔊
← In desperation the animals began appealing to the two horses which drew the van to stop. 🔊
← Boxer was never seen again. Three days later it was announced that he had died in the hospital at Willingdon, in spite of receiving every attention a horse could have. 🔊
← Some of the animals had noticed that the van which took Boxer away was marked "Horse Slaughterer," and had actually jumped to the conclusion that Boxer was being sent to the knacker's. 🔊
← It was just after the sheep had returned, on a pleasant evening when the animals had finished work and were making their way back to the farm buildings, that the terrified neighing of a horse sounded from the yard. 🔊