quotations about dogs
I love a good dog--a good house dog that guards the premises and has an honest bark and loves my children. I love him because he loves me.
BILL ARP
Wallace's Monthly, May 1884
Dogs are like a gift, a grace undeserved, that releases us into an economy of abundance, where the economic laws of scarcity and therefore competition no longer apply and where instead we feel ourselves the beneficiaries of a wealth that is actualized only as we give it away, and in giving we see something we could not see before.
STEPHEN H. WEBB
On God and Dogs
No one ... appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as a dog does.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
John Mistletoe
One reason most dogs are much happier than most people is that dogs aren't affected by external circumstances the way we are. I notice that even when it's pouring rain outside, my dogs, Blue and Celeste, are still excited to go for a walk. As soon as I open the front door to look outside, they're beside me in a flash, standing expectantly, ready for an adventure. I usually wait for a break in the downpour, and then we all dash out together. The fact that the ground is soggy and there are mud puddles dotting the landscape means nothing to the dogs. While I'm gingerly picking my way around the wet spots, the dogs are joyfully splashing right through them. They aren't afraid to get their paws dirty.
MATT WEINSTEIN & LUKE BARBER
Dogs Don't Bit When a Growl Will Do
Poor dog! I've a strange feeling about the dumb things as if they wanted to speak, and it was a trouble to 'em because they couldn't. I can't help being sorry for the dogs always, though perhaps there's no need. But they may well have more in them than they know how to make us understand, for we can't say half what we feel, with all our words.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
Dogs are voiceless ... a critical part of having dogs is emotional responsibility: learning how to understand them and, when necessary, to speak and act on their behalf.
JON KATZ
The New Work of Dogs
Every dog is a lion at home.
ITALIAN PROVERB
Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
The Portable Athiest
The dog may have a spirit, as well as his brutal master:
A spirit to live in happiness; for why should he be robbed of his existence?
Hath he not a conscience of evil, a glimmer of moral sense,
Love and hatred, courage and fear, and visible shame and pride?
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
When the forefinger of twilight begins to smudge the clear-drawn lines of the Big City there is inaugurated an hour devoted to one of the most melancholy sights of urban life. Out from the towering flat crags and apartment peaks of the cliff dwellers of New York steals an army of beings that were once men. Even yet they go upright upon two limbs and retain human form and speech; but you will observe that they are behind animals in progress. Each of these beings follows a dog, to which he is fastened by an artificial ligament. These men are all victims to Circe. Not willingly do they become flunkeys to Fido, bell boys to bull terriers, and toddlers after Towzer. Modern Circe, instead of turning them into animals, has kindly left the difference of a six-foot leash between them. Every one of those dogmen has been either cajoled, bribed, or commanded by his own particular Circe to take the dear household pet out for an airing. By their faces and manner you can tell that the dogmen are bound in a hopeless enchantment. Never will there come even a dog-catcher Ulysses to remove the spell.
O. HENRY
"Ulysses and the Dogman"
Dogs are stupid. Harsh words, but often proved true. They obsess over excrement, roll in manure and rotting carcasses, drink out of toilets, and perform demeaning pet tricks for measly biscuits. Their cheerful personalities have everything to do with their being blissfully ignorant, which explains why we're so drawn to them. Dogs to all sorts of stupid things and yet never get embarrassed or feel ashamed. We should be so lucky.
BILL BUCKLEY
back cover, Dogs are Stupid
I had a dog that was so lazy, he had a prerecorded bark.
JAY LENO
Jay Leno's How to Be the Funniest Kid in the Whole Wide World
As the hound, so the pup.
IRISH PROVERB
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
GROUCHO MARX
The Essential Groucho
The noblest of all dogs is the hot dog; it feeds the hand that bites it.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
You dogs are smart enough to know that worry is something you do with a bone, and let it got at that. Even Pavlov couldn't do any more than prove that your brain is in your gut--something that you knew all along.
FRANK LOESSER
letter to Angel Steinbeck, A Most Remarkable Fella: Frank Loesser and the Guys and Dolls in His Life
What I like about a dog it stops people getting after you, they're not going to come round in the night. But they make the place stink because I might want to stay out a few days and when I get back I might want to stay in a few days and a dog can become a tyrant to you.
CARYL CHURCHILL
A Number
The dog's agenda is simple, fathomable, overt: I want. I want to go out, come in, eat something, lie here, play with that, kiss you. There are no ulterior motives with a dog, no mind games, no second-guessing, no complicated negotiations or bargains, and no guilt trips or grudges if a request is denied. If you've spent a lifetime navigating the landscape of human relationships, characterized as it can be by covetness and ambivalence and indirection, this can be an enormous relief.
CAROLINE KNAPP
Pack of Two
The equipment for dogs are collars, leashes, and girths. Let the collars be soft as well as broad, that they may not wear off the dog's hair. Let the leashes have loops for the hand attached to them, but nothing else; for those who form the collars out of the leashes do not manage well for their dogs. Let the girths have broad bands, that they may not gall their flanks; and let there be iron points stitched into them that they may protect the breeds.
XENOPHON
Cynegeticus
Whoever said you can't buy Happiness forgot little puppies.
GENE HILL
A Hunter's Fireside Guide: Tales of Dogs