Top 26 Dressage Quotes & Sayings

I think some horses are meant to do... eventing or dressage. We have Western horses who canter around. I think it takes, especially at the level I'm at now, it takes a horse that wants to do it.

Before taking up dressage, I'd distanced myself from the Paralympics because I hadn't wanted to be defined by my disability. Then when I grew up and got an office job, things started to change. I'm actually allergic to horses, but I'm even more allergic to paperwork!

A horse perceives eye contact as provocative, as if it and its status in the herd are not being respected. If it cannot avoid eye contact, it will react in a different way, by rebelling for example. In dressage you don't get anywhere by not showing respect, however superior your species might be. Any animal trainer can tell you that. In the mountains in Argentina there's a wild horse which will jump off the nearest precipice if any human tries to ride it.

When I used to say I did dressage, I got blank looks. No one had a clue what I was on about.

The goal of all dressage riding should be to bring the horse and rider together in harmony...a oneness of balance, purpose, and athletic expression.

What are the origins of dressage? Did just, one day, some young horse say to his dad, 'Dad, I don't want to charge into battle...I just wanna dance'?

The idea of being a young 50 sounds like you're trying to kid yourself, like a Harley-Davidson or something. I've bought a dressage horse instead.

It's very good for you, riding. You know how every model is like, 'I do yoga.' Well, I find horses to have the same effect, in that you have to put your ego aside and concentrate on making the horse do the things you want it to do, and move in the way you want it to move - particularly if you're doing dressage.

The Romneys have a horse competing in the Olympics. Ann Romney's horse failed to win a medal in the dressage event today, which is a shame because if there's one thing that family needs, it's more gold.

You get that horse to really operate as if he’s your legs and you can take that anywhere you want. You can dress up in any kind of clothes you like. You can be a jumper, dressage rider, trail rider, cowboy, anything.

Just as experience dictates to the ballet teacher the length of time necessary to train his students, so the horse, too, needs time to mature into a great four legged dancer. This fact cannot be obliterated by seeming successes that supposedly prove the opposite. For, even if someone should succeed in training a horse to high school level by the age of eight, this individual occurrence cannot shake the foundations of the classical art of riding, if this dressage horse is completely unsound and unusable by the age of ten.

I got to a point where I was doing county-level shows, but it was dressage that I really loved where, effectively, the horses are dancing. At one point, I was a groom for Hannah Esberger, who has competed for Great Britain and has seven national championship titles.

Far be it from me to force anyone into either chess or dressage, but if you choose to do so yourself, in my opinion there is only one way: follow the rules.

Not all horses are going to be show jumpers, not all horses are going to be dressage horses. So you have to sort of find where the horse physically fits into what might suit him, but all horses can be comfortable and all horses can have good, solid fundamentals.

When one makes sculptures of horses, one remembers all of that great relationship that humans had with them.....Even today one raises horses only for dressage, the races, for the pleasure of horseback riding. It has become an animal of romance, an animal of pleasure which has lost its utility in the West.

I horse ride. I find it is the best way to maintain my fitness and stay physical. I have to practise anyway for my equestrian front. I do dressage and schooling too. I also do physical training where I work on my neck and upper body strength. Racing is a high endurance sport and you are in the car for a long time so this area is crucial.

I had a very outdoorsy childhood. I was athletic and used to ride and do dressage. I could ride almost before I could walk. There is a picture of me at 18 months old sitting happily on the back of a donkey.

And it's not that going out for a hack is wrong or bad, I certainly don't view it as that; it's just that there's something about the dressage, being put through your paces, that makes you better.

It's going to be hard to ever have a horse to replace Valegro. He is a professor. I think he read the dressage book and learnt it all before he ever did it.

My first ambition was to be a show jumper. I did a bit of dressage as part of it, and the dressage trainer saw me and said, 'Why are you wasting your time with the other stuff? You should be concentrating on this.'

I have walked into several pubs, and guys in there have said to me, 'My God, you are the girl off the dancing horse.' They have got no idea about dressage, and they said, 'I can't work out whether you make the horse do that or the horse does it itself - we just couldn't tell - but it brought tears to our eyes.'

It isn't called dressage any more - it is called 'dancing horses.'

I think it's phenomenal and expected that Paralympians will take on able bodied people more and more. In dressage, it happens all the time. But there are very few adaptions, and they are never allowed to give you an advantage.

Dressage is when you put a dress on your horse. It's like putting on drag, but for horses.

I understand when people think dressage is boring. But while your standard horse is like driving a Fiesta, our horses are like driving Formula One cars. I can't breathe without the horse reacting. You are training another being to become really responsive and athletic and powerful.

The biggest enemy to the partnership of dressage is impatience and the human nature to dominate other creatures.