"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)

"Happiness is a warm puppy."
— Charles M. Schulz

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man."
— Mark Twain

"“Meow” means “woof” in cat. "
— George Carlin

"I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals."
— Winston S. Churchill

"Dogs never bite me. Just humans."
— Marilyn Monroe

"If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much."
— Mark Twain

"Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in."
— Mark Twain

"Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring--it was peace."
— Milan Kundera

"A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself."
— Josh Billings

"You think those dogs will not be in heaven! I tell you they will be there long before any of us."
— Robert Louis Stevenson

"Petting, scratching, and cuddling a dog could be as soothing to the mind and heart as deep meditation and almost as good for the soul as prayer."
— Dean Koontz (False Memory)

"All his life he tried to be a good person. Many times, however, he failed.
For after all, he was only human. He wasn't a dog.
(Snoopy, at his typewriter)"
— Charles M. Schulz

"Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal... In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.

Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away for two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh--not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court."
— Mark Twain (Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings)

"If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience."
— Woodrow Wilson

"The universe contains any amount of horrible ways to be woken up, such as the noise of the mob breaking down the front door, the scream of fire engines, or the realization that today is the Monday which on Friday night was a comfortably long way off.

A dog's wet nose is not strictly speaking the worst of the bunch, but it has it's own peculiar dreadfulness which connoisseurs of the ghastly and dog owners everywhere have come to know and dread. It's like having a small piece of defrosting liver pressed lovingly against you."
— Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures)

"The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.

"
— Charles de Gaulle

"I believe in integrity. Dogs have it. Humans are sometimes lacking it."
— Cesar Millan

"If you don't own a dog, at least one, there is not necessarily anything wrong with you, but there may be something wrong with your life."
— Roger Caras

"The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man's."
— Mark Twain

"The average dog is a nicer person than the average person."
— Andy Rooney

"The dog is the most faithful of animals and would be much esteemed were it not so common. Our Lord God has made His greatest gifts the commonest."
— Martin Luther

"Dogs have given us their absolute all. We are the center of their universe. We are the focus of their love and faith and trust. They serve us in return for scraps. It is without a doubt the best deal man has ever made. "
— Roger Caras

"Acquiring a dog may be the only opportunity a human ever has to choose a relative."
— Mordecai Wyatt Johnson

"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."
— Caroline Knapp

"Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on fire hydrants."
— Margaret Atwood (Der blinde Mörder / The Blind Assassin)

"There is one other reason for dressing well, namely that dogs respect it, and will not attack you in good clothes."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Every dog must have his day."
— Jonathan Swift

"Golden retrievers are not bred to be guard dogs, and considering the size of their hearts and their irrepressible joy in life, they are less likely to bite than to bark, less likely to bark than to lick a hand in greeting. In spite of their size, they think they are lap dogs, and in spite of being dogs, they think they are also human, and nearly every human they meet is judged to have the potential to be a boon companion who might, at many moment, cry, "Let's go!" and lead them on a great adventure."
— Dean Koontz

"The dog has seldom been successful in pulling man up to its level of sagacity, but man has frequently dragged the dog down to his."
— James Thurber

"We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet; and amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog has made an alliance with us."
— Max Depree

"They [dogs] never talk about themselves but listen to you while you talk about yourself, and keep up an appearance of being interested in the conversation. "
— Jerome K. Jerome

"We might miss the sign or we may be unable to read the expression, but it is almost a contradiction in terms to say that a dog feels something but does not show it. What a dog feels, a dog shows, and, conversely, what a dog shows, a dog actually does feel."
— Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

"The rooms of his apartment were full with the dog home again, convalescing. He was satisfied to know, even when she was out of sight, that somewhere in the apartment she was sleeping or eating or sitting watchfully. It was family, he guessed, more or less. Did most people want a house of living things at night, to know that in the dark around them other warm bodies slept?

Such a house could even be the whole world."
— Lydia Millet (How the Dead Dream)

"Why do dachshunds wear their ears inside out?"
— P.G. Wodehouse

"Plus je vois le homes, plus j’admire les chiens” (The more I see of men, the more I admire dogs)."
— Madame Roland

"Aquiring a dog may be the only opportunity a human ever has to choose a relative."
— M. Siegel

"We who choose to surround ourselves
with lives even more temporary than our
own, live within a fragile circle;
easily and often breached.
Unable to accept its awful gaps,
we would still live no other way.
We cherish memory as the only
certain immortality, never fully
understanding the necessary plan."
— Irving Townsend

"Not Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Astor together could have raised money enough to buy a quarter share in my little dog."
— Ernest Thompson Seton

"Questers of the truth, that’s who dogs are; seekers after the invisible scent of another being’s authentic core."
— Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

"I've been on so many blind dates I should get a free dog."
— Whitney M. Young Jr.