A dog will look at you as if to say, "What do you want me to do for you? I'll do anything for you." Whether a dog can in fact, do anything for you if you don't have sheep (I never have) is another matter. The dog is willing. ~ Roy Blount, Jr.

The dog is a mammal in the order Carnivora. Dogs were first domesticated from wolves at least 17,000 years ago, but perhaps as early as 150,000 years ago based upon recent genetic fossil and DNA evidence. In this time, the dog has developed into hundreds of breeds with a great degree of variation.

Quotes

  • That flaming dog has messed on our steps again. It's the one species I wouldn't mind seeing disappear from the face of the earth. I wish they were like the White Rhino -- six of them left in the Serengeti National Park, and all males. Do you know what dogs are? They're those beer-sodden soccer fans piling out of coaches in a lay-by, yanking their cocks out without a blush and pissing up against the wall thirty-nine in a row. I can't stand it.
    • The character George in Alan Bennett's Getting On (1971), Act 1.
  • DOG, n. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship. This Divine Being in some of his smaller and silkier incarnations takes, in the affection of Woman, the place to which there is no human male aspirant. The Dog is a survival -- an anachronism. He toils not, neither does he spin, yet Solomon in all his glory never lay upon a door-mat all day long, sun-soaked and fly-fed and fat, while his master worked for the means wherewith to purchase the idle wag of the Solomonic tail, seasoned with a look of tolerant recognition.
    • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
  • A dog will make eye contact. A cat will, too, but a cat's eyes don't even look entirely warm-blooded to me, whereas a dog's eyes look human except less guarded. A dog will look at you as if to say, "What do you want me to do for you? I'll do anything for you." Whether a dog can in fact, do anything for you if you don't have sheep (I never have) is another matter. The dog is willing.
    • Roy Blount, Jr., "Dogs Vis-A-Vis Cats," Now Where Were We?, Random House (1989).
  • In Sharifabad the dogs distinguished clearly between Moslem and Zoroastrian, and were prepared to go…full of hope, into a crowded Zoroastrian assembly, or to fall asleep trustfully in a Zoroastrian lane, but would flee as before Satan from a group of Moslem boys…The evidence points…to Moslem hostility to these animals having been deliberately fostered in the first place in Iran, as a point of opposition to the old (pre-Islamic jihad conquest) faith (i.e., Zoroastrianism) there. Certainly in the Yazdi area…Moslems found a double satisfaction in tormenting dogs, since they were thereby both afflicting an unclean creature and causing distress to the infidel who cherished him. There are grim…stories from the time (i.e., into the latter half of the 19th century) when the annual poll-tax (jizya) was exacted, of the tax gatherer tying a Zoroastrian and a dog together, and flogging both alternately until the money was somehow forthcoming, or death released them. I myself was spared any worse sight than that of a young Moslem girl…standing over a litter of two-week old puppies, and suddenly kicking one as hard as she could with her shod foot. The puppy screamed with pain, but at my angry intervention she merely said blankly, ‘But it’s unclean.’ In Sharifabad I was told by distressed Zoroastrian children of worse things: a litter of puppies cut to pieces with a spade-edge, and a dog’s head laid open with the same implement; and occasionally the air was made hideous with the cries of some tormented animal. Such wanton cruelties on the Moslems’ part added not a little to the tension between the communities.
  • “Once Gabriel promised the Prophet (that he would visit him, but Gabriel did not come) and later on he said, ‘We, angels, do not enter a house which contains a picture or a dog.’”
    • Sahih Bukhari 4.54.50
  • "Most people believe that when a dog howls near a house it forebodes death, for it is said a dog can distinguish the awful form of Azra'il, the Angel of Death."
    • Richard Burton's Arabia, vol I p 290. in : Hughes, T. P. (1986). Dictionary of Islam: : being a cyclopaedia of the doctrines, rites, ceremonies, and customs together with the technical and theological terms, of the Muhammadan religion.
  • Near this spot
    Are deposited the Remains of one
    Who possessed Beauty without Vanity,
    Strength without Insolence,
    Courage without Ferocity,
    And all the virtues of Man, without his Vices.
    This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery
    If inscribed over human ashes,
    Is but a just tribute to the Memory of
    BOATSWAIN, a DOG
  • Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the LORD thy God for any vow: for even both these are abomination unto the LORD thy God.
  • As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.
  • Yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table.
  • The time comes to every dog when it ceases to care for people merely for biscuits or bones, or even for caresses, and walks out of doors. When a dog really loves, it prefers the person who gives it nothing, and perhaps is too ill ever to take it out for exercise, to all the liberal cooks and active dog-boys in the world.
  • I could discern clearly, even at that early age, the essential difference between people who are kind to dogs and people who really love them.
  • οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες τοὺς ἐχθροὺς δάκνουσιν, ἐγὼ δὲ τοὺς φίλους, ἵνα σώσω.
  • I believe that a dog brings out the very best there is in man or woman. Dogs make me feel how shabby most of our loyalties are, how limited our patience, how destructible our love of one another. You couldn't revert to the savage state so easily if you had a dog on a desert island. For a dog is a gentleman, with kindliness in his heart and dignity in his demeanor—kindliness and dignity being, I think, the two qualities which make a gent a gent or not.
    • Kay Francis, in "If I Were Marooned on a Desert Island" by Faith Service, in Picturegoer (March 27, 1937)
  • And just as he has the sense of virtue, so also he has the sense of sin. A cat may be taught not to do certain things, but if it is caught out and flees, it flees not from shame, but from fear. But the shame of a dog touches an abyss of misery as bottomless as any human emotion. He has fallen out of the state of grace, and nothing but the absolution and remission of his sin will restore him to happiness.
  • When a dog wags her tail and barks at the same time, how do you know which end to believe?
  • "Why do you let people call you a dog? You won't let anyone call you a knight."
    "I like dogs better than knights ... A hound will die for you, but never lie to you."
  • “Abdullah (b. Umar) (Allah be pleased with them) reported: Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) ordered the killing of dogs and we would send (men) in Medina and its corners and we did not spare any dog that we did not kill, so much so that we killed the dog that accompanied the wet she-camel belonging to the people of the desert.”
    • — Sahih Muslim 3811
  • “Ibn Mughaffal reported: The Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) ordered killing of the dogs, and then said: What about them, i. e. about other dogs? and then granted concession (to keep) the dog for hunting and the dog for (the security) of the herd, and said: When the dog licks the utensil, wash it seven times, and rub it with earth the eighth time.”
    • — Sahih Muslim 551
  • To be, contents his natural desire,
    He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;
    But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
    His faithful dog shall bear him company.
    Go wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense
    Weigh thy opinion against Providence.
  • It's funny how dogs and cats know the inside of folks better than other folks do, isn't it?
  • A dog cannot relate his autobiography; however eloquently he may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were honest but poor.
    • Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge: It's Scope and Limits (1948), pt. 2, Chapter 1.
  • Angels do not enter a house in which there is a dog.
    • Sahih Muslim. (5246-5251) Quoted from Ram Swarup, Understanding Islam through Hadis, 1983.
  • A man saw a dog eating mud from (the severity of) thirst. So, that man took a shoe (and filled it) with water and kept on pouring the water for the dog till it quenched its thirst. So Allah approved of his deed and made him to enter Paradise.
  • The little dogs and all,
    Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me.
  • In man, social intercourse has centred mainly on the process of absorbing fluid into the organism, but in the domestic dog and to a lesser extent among all wild canine species, the act charged with most social significance is the excretion of fluid.
  • In Mongolia, when a dog dies, he is buried high in the hills so people cannot walk on his grave. The dog’s master whispers in the dog’s ear his wishes that the dog will return as a man in his next life. Then his tail is cut off and put beneath his head, and a piece of meat of fat is cut off and placed in his mouth to sustain his soul for its journey; before he is reincarnated, the dog’s soul is freed to travel the land, to run across the high desert plains for as long as it would like.
    I learned that from a program on the National Geographic Channel, so I believe it is true. Not all dogs return as men, they say; only those who are ready.
    I am ready.
  • On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.
    • Peter Steiner, cartoon in The New Yorker (July 5, 1993).
  • I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.
  • You are a mystery in an enigma in a big ball of fur,
    An irresistible magnet to every child and flea and burr.
    Your nose is high-resolution while I live in a near-scentless fog
    You run at high speed, while I just have to slog (but it's a good ol' slog)
    So I just want to thank you for being my dog....
    • Richard Summerbell, (Thank You For Being) My Dog, 2004.

Proverbs

  • Love me, love my dog.
    • Bernard of Clairvaux attests in the 12th century this was a common proverb (Latin: "Qui me amat, amet et canem meum"; French: "Qui m'aime, aime mon chien") In Festo Sancti Michaelis, Sermo 1, sect. 3; translation from Richard Chevenix Trench, Archbishop of Dublin, On the Lessons in Proverbs ([1853] 1856) p. 148.
    • Also reported in English by John Heywood, Proverbs (1546), Part II, chapter 9; and by Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia (1732), No. 3292
    • Variant: Whosoever loveth me loveth my hound.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 198-200.
  • Non stuzzicare il can che dorme.
    • Do not disturb the sleeping dog.
    • Alessandro Allegri, Rime e Prose (1754).
  • Il fait mal éveiller le chien qui dort.
    • It is bad to awaken a sleeping dog.
    • From a Manuscript of 13th Cen. in Le Roux de Lincy's Collection, Volume I, p. 108; Volume II, p. 392. La Guerre de Genève. Poem. (1534). Franck—Sprichwörter. (1541). An earlier version in Ignaz von Zingerle, Sprichwörter im Mittelalter. For Earlier idea, with cat substituted; see Gabriel Meurier, Trésor des Sentences; Nuñez de Guzman, Refranes, Salamanca. Wake not a sleeping lion. Countryman's New Commonwealth. (1647). Wake not a sleeping wolf. Henry IV, Part II (1597-99), Act I, scene 2, line 174. Henry VIII, Act I, scene 1, line 121.
  • Mother of dead dogs.
    • Quoted by Carlyle in Reminiscences, Volume I, p. 257; Volume II, p. 54. Froude's ed. Also in Life in London. (Froude). Volume I, p. 196.
  • On the green banks of Shannon, when Sheelah was nigh,
    No blithe Irish lad was so happy as I;
    No harp like my own could so cheerily play,
    And wherever I went was my poor dog Tray.
  • His faithful dog salutes the smiling guest.
  • It is nought good a sleeping hound to wake.
  • A living dog is better than a dead lion.
    • Ecclesiastes, IX. 4.
  • Old dog Tray's ever faithful;
    Grief can not drive him away;
    He is gentle, he is kind—
    I shall never, never find
    A better friend than old dog Tray!
    • Stephen C. Foster, Old Dog Tray.
  • And in that town a dog was found,
    As many dogs there be,
    Both mongrel, puppy, whelp and hound,
    And curs of low degree.
  • Plus on apprend a connaître l'homme, plus on apprend à estimer le chien.
    • The more one comes to know men, the more one comes to admire the dog.
    • Joussenel, quoted by Paul Franche, La Legende Dorée des Bêtes, p. 191. The saying is attributed generally to Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné. Belloy, Siege de Calais, says: Ce qu'il y a de mieux dans l'homme, c'est le chien. Quoted in this form by Voltaire.
  • Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?
    • II Kings, VIII. 13.
  • There is sorrow enough in the natural way
    From men and women to fill our day;
    But when we are certain of sorrow in store
    Why do we always arrange for more?
    Brothers and sisters I bid you beware
    Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.
  • Plus je vois des représentants du peuple, plus 'j'aime mes chiens.
    • The more I see the representatives of the people, the more I love my dogs.
    • Alphonse de Lamartine. Quoted in a letter from Comte Alfred d'Orsay to John Forster. (1850). See Notes and Queries, Oct. 3, 1908, p. 273.
  • Qui m'aime il aime mon chien.
    • Who loves me loves my dog.
    • Le Roux de Lincy, French Proverbs. Gives date 13th Cent. In Tresor de Jeh. de Meung. Vers. 1,567.
  • But in some canine Paradise
    Your wraith, I know, rebukes the moon,
    And quarters every plain and hill,
    Seeking its master. * * * As for me
    This prayer at least the gods fulfill
    That when I pass the flood and see
    Old Charon by Stygian coast
    Take toll of all the shades who land,
    Your little, faithful barking ghost
    May leap to lick my phantom hand.
    • St. John Lucas, To a Dog.
  • The dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table.
    • Matthew, XV. 27.
  • The dog is turned to his own vomit again.
    • II Peter, II. 22.
  • I am his Highness' dog at Kew;
    Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
  • Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.
    • Alexander Pope, letters to and from H. Cromwell, Esq. Letter X. Oct. 9, 1709.
  • Canis timidus vehementius latrat quam mordet.
    • The cowardly dog barks more violently than it bites.
    • Quintus Curtius, De Rebus Best, Alexand. Magn, VII. 14.
  • I have a dog of Blenheim birth,
    With fine long ears and full of mirth;
    And sometimes, running o'er the plain,
    He tumbles on his nose:
    But quickly jumping up again,
    Like lightning on he goes!
  • We are two travellers, Roger and I.
    Roger's my dog—come here, you scamp!
    Jump for the gentleman—mind your eye!
    Over the table,—look out for the lamp!
    The rogue is growing a little old;
    Five years we've tramped through wind and weather,
    And slept out-doors when nights were cold,
    And ate and drank and starved together.
    • John T. Trowbridge, The Vagabonds.
  • Gentlemen of the Jury: The one, absolute, unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog.
    • Senator George Graham Vest, Eulogy on the Dog. Found in Elbert Hubbard's Pig-Pen Pete, p. 178.

Dialogue

  • Snowball: Where are my testicles, Summer? They were removed. Where have they gone?
Summer: Oh, wow. That's an intense line of questioning, snuffles.
Snowball: Do not call me that! "Snuffles" was my slave name. You shall now call me snowball, because my fur is pretty and white.
Summer: Okay, snowball, just calm down, okay? You're scaring me.
Snowball: Scaring you? Tell me, Summer, if a human was born with stumpy legs, would they breed it with another deformed human and put their children on display like the dachshund?

See also

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