Quotes about dogs
page 7

“Well I'm accustomed to a smooth ride,
Or maybe I'm a dog that's lost its bite,
I don't expect to be treated like a fool, no, no,
I don't expect to sleep long nights,
Some people say a lie is just a lie but I say,
Why deny the obvious child?”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

The Obvious Child
Song lyrics, The Rhythm of the Saints (1990)

People, Lie, Fools, Sleep

“I really wanted to go on Broadway but I was like - do I want to leave my dogs, my house and my friends for nine months? But then I thought, "Wait a second. If this wasn't being offered to me and I heard there was an audition I'd be desperate to have the job." When you're offered things, it makes it so much easier to be indecisive. And it's silly because you can pass on some really amazing things.”

Alicia Silverstone (1976) American actress

Interview with Barbara Ellen: The Observer, Sunday 29 February 2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2004/feb/29/features.review

Waiting, Housing, Indecision

“Is there any more mysterious idea for an artist than the conception of how nature is mirrored in the eyes of an animal? How does a horse see the world, or an eagle, or a doe, or a dog?”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

Source: 1915 - 1916, 100 Aphorisms', Franz Marc (1915), p. 445

World, Idea, Nature, Animals

“The argument of the “long view” may be correct in some meaninglessly abstract sense, but it represents a fundamental mistake in categories and time scales. Our only legitimate long view extends to our children and our children's children's children—hundreds or a few thousands of years down the road. If we let the slaughter continue, they will share a bleak world with rats, dogs, cockroaches, pigeons, and mosquitoes. A potential recovery millions of years later has no meaning at our appropriate scale.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

"The Passion of Antoine Lavoisier", p. 365
Bully for Brontosaurus (1991)

Children, World, Sense, Time

“In India, if you are from the elite, dogs are extremely important. The breed of the dog indicates your wealth, that you are westernized. The cook, another human being, is on a much lower level than your dog. You see this all the time.”

Kiran Desai (1971) Indian author

Kiran Desai on the Costs Of Literary Celebrity http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117701272922375905.html (April 21, 2007) by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, The Wall Street Journal

Time, Cooking, Wealth

“While a man was walking along a road, he became very thirsty and found a well. He lowered himself into the well, drank, and came out. Then [he saw] a dog protruding its tongue out with thirst. The man said: "This dog has become exhausted from thirst in the same way as I." He lowered himself into the well again and filled his shoe with water. He gave the dog some water to drink. He thanked God, and [his sins were] forgiven. The Prophet was then asked: "Is there a reward for us in our animals?"”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

He said: "There is a reward in every living thing."
Fiqh-us-Sunnah, Volume 3, Number 104
Sunni Hadith

God, Shoe, Way, Drink

“Assigning human personalities to animals is the chief trait of the pet owner—the doting dog-lover with his baby talk, the smug stay-at-home with a fat lump of fur on her lap who says, "Me, I'm a cat person," and the granny who puts her nose against the tin cage and makes kissing noises at her parakeet. Their affection is often tinged with a sense of superiority. Deer and duck hunters never talk this way about their prey, though big game hunters— Hemingway is the classic example — often sentimentalize the creatures they blow to bits and then lovingly stuff to hang on the wall.”

Paul Theroux (1941) American travel writer and novelist

Living With Geese.

Way, Home, Game, Cats

“A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent, without giving any sound.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

John Calvin, quoted in The Westminster Collection of Christian Quotations (2001) by Martin H. Manser, p. 56
Misattributed

God, Truth

“Sheep were docile, yes, but vigilant. Unlike many people, sheep were always aware that predators existed and were alert for the scent and the schemes of wolves.
Contemporary Americans were so proseperous, so happily distracted by such a richness of vivid entertainments, they were reluctant to have their fun diminished by acknowledging that anything existed with fangs and fierce appetites. If now and then they recognized a wolf, they threw a bone to it and convinced themselves it was a dog.”

Dean Koontz book The Good Guy

Krait's musings
Source: The Good Guy (2007), Chapter 7, pp. 52-53

People, Wolf

“No more entreating of me, you dog, by knees or parents.”

Homér Iliad

XXII. 345 (tr. R. Lattimore); Achilles to Hector.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

Parent

“Dogs howled, sensing the drama. Without Seriati(General), the president would never have left the country, it was a coup d’état … helped by secret outside influences.”

Leila Ben Ali (1956) Wife of Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali

23 June, 2012. Ben Ali’s wife blames general for Tunisia ‘coup d’état’ http://www.france24.com/en/20120623-ben-ali-wife-leila-blames-general-tunisia-coup-d-etat-saudi-arabia

Secret, Sense, Help, Country

“We call the mind that wants to make the way of the Universe clear and to put it into practice the mind that seeks truth. However clever a dog or a monkey may be, they cannot realize the universal mind. Only human beings have the privilege and capacity to realize it. If you have a mind that seeks truth, you are happy because this is the proof that you are a real human being.”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

18 : The mind that seeks truth
Ki Sayings (2003)

Truth, Way, Universe, Happiness

“In my Spanish cloak,
And old slouch hat,
And overshoes of felt,
And Tyke, my faithful dog,
And my knotted hickory cane,
I slipped about with a bull's-eye lantern
From door to door on the square”

Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950) American writer

" Andy the Night-Watch http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/andy-the-night-watch/"

Faith

“There is no estimating the wit and wisdom concealed and latent in our lower fellow mortals until made manifest by profound experiences; for it is through suffering that dogs as well as saints are developed and made perfect.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Terry Gifford, LLO, page 685
For more excerpts from Muir's account of the dog Stickeen in Alaska, see Stickeen.
1900s, Stickeen (1909)

Wisdom, Suffering, Perfection

“What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie?
I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.
The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs—I was a man before I was a king.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Phoenix on the Sword" (1932)

Lie, Way, Singing

“The poverty of the lower ranks of people in China far surpasses that of the most beggarly nations of Europe. In the neighbourhood of Canton many hundred, it is commonly said, many thousand families have no habitation on the land, but live constantly in little fishing boats upon the rivers and the canals. The subsistence which they find there is so scanty that they are eager to fish up the nastiest garbage thrown overboard from any European ship. Any carrion, the carcase of a dead dog or cat, for example, though half putrid and stinking, is as welcome to them as the most wholesome food to the people of other countries.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VIII, p. 86.

People, Family, Food, Cats

“The amazing part of the great Danish cartoon caper isn't that Muslims immediately engage in acts of mob violence when things don't go their way. That is de rigueur for the Religion of Peace. Their immediate response to all bad news is mass violence. That's a "dog bites man" story and belongs on page B-34, next to the grade school hot lunch menu and the birth notices. After an Egyptian ferry capsized recently, killing hundreds of passengers, a whole braying mob of passengers' relatives staged an organized attack on the company, throwing furniture out the window and burning the building to the ground. Witnesses say it was the most violent ocean liner-related incident since Carnival Cruise Lines fired Kathie Lee Gifford. The "offense to Islam" ruse is merely an excuse for Muslims to revert to their default mode: rioting and setting things on fire.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"Muslim Bites Dog" (15 February 2006) http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/printer_friendly.cgi?article=100. 2006

School, Peace, Religion, Way

“A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1800s, Auguries of Innocence (1803), Line 9

“In order to feel safer on his private jet, actor John Travolta has purchased a bomb-sniffing dog. Unfortunately for the actor, the dog came six movies too late.”

Tina Fey (1970) American comedian, writer, producer and actress

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/01/01dupdate.phtml

Feeling

“I’m a gluten-free, soy-free vegan who also tries to be sugar-free as much as possible, so it can be crazy on the road trying to find things to eat. Once we were in Madison, Wisconsin and I was trying to explain what veganism was at a restaurant, and they went, “So can you eat roast beef?” […] When I was doing Celebrity Big Brother and told me that I wasn’t the spokesperson for gay people, I said… well wait a second, I’m not a dog, does that mean I can’t fight and speak up for animal rights?”

Michelle Visage (1968) American singer, radio DJ, TV host

"An Interview with the One and Only Michelle Visage", HuffPost (28 July 2017) https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/an-interview-with-the-one-and-only-michelle-visage_us_597b6b6ce4b09982b737640f.

People, Waiting, Animals, Fight

“I have not written this book as something that is over. When you have lived like that, it will be present always, like the gun I shot and the dogs and those grouse living in the subcellars of my brain.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

Grouse on the Mountain (1994)

Books

“My own experience of mescalin is described in the appendix of Beyond the Outsider. My 'trip' was pleasant enough, although I experienced none of the visual effects described by Huxley; I was plunged into an agreeable but sluggish dreaminess. In this torpid state, I became aware of the problem mentioned by Huxley: 'How was this cleansed perception to be reconciled with a proper concern with human relations…?' -- in my case, with my concern for my wife and three-year-old daughter? Although I personally felt nothing but a sense of relaxation and trustfulness, I was aware that, in practice, the world is full of dangers, and in this state, I was incapable of the necessary vigilance; it made me feel guilty. I was neglecting my job of looking after them. Moreover, my ability to think was impaired. Huxley remarks that he found his own ability to remember and 'think straight' to be little, if at all, reduced. I could 'think straight', but I could not think to any purpose. Even the feeling of universal love was not particularly pleasant; I compared it to having a large alsation dog who puts his paws on your shoulder and licks your face.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Frankenstein's Castle (1980), p. 59-60

Love, World, Feeling, Problem

“We all travelled light, taking with us only what we considered to be the bare essentials of life. When we opened our luggage for Customs inspection, the contents of our bags were a fair indication of character and interests. Thus Margo's luggage contained a multitude of diaphanous garments, three books on slimming, and a regiment of small bottles each containing some elixir guaranteed to cure acne. Leslie's cases held a couple of roll-top pullovers and a pair of trousers which were wrapped around two revolvers, an air-pistol, a book called Be Your Own Gunsmith, and a large bottle of oil that leaked. Larry was accompanied by two trunks of books and a brief case containing his clothes. Mother's luggage was sensibly divided between clothes and various volumes on cooking and gardening. I travelled with only those items that I thought necessary to relieve the tedium of a long journey: four books on natural history, a butterfly net, a dog, and a jam jar full of caterpillars all in imminent danger of turning into chrysalids. Thus, by our standards, fully equipped, we left the clammy shores of England.”

Gerald Durrell book My Family and Other Animals

On the family's move from England to Corfu
My Family and Other Animals (1956)

Life, Books, Travel, History

“Step right up young lady
Your two hundred birthdays make you old if not senile
And we see the symptoms there in your rigor mortis smile
With your old folks eating dog food and your children eating paint
While the pirates own the flag and sell us sermons on restraint.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

There Only Was One Choice
Song lyrics, Dance Band on the Titanic (1977)

Children, Food, Smile, Birthday

“The commonest and cheapest sounds, as the barking of a dog, produce the same effect on fresh and healthy ears that the rarest music does. It depends on your appetite for sound. Just as a crust is sweeter to a healthy appetite than confectionery to a pampered or diseased one.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

December 27, 1857
Journals (1838-1859)

Disease, Music, Dependency

“No man under Heaven deserves these sacrifices from us women. Men! They are the enemies of our innocence and our peace — they drag us away from our parents' love and our sisters' friendship — they take us body and soul to themselves, and fasten our helpless lives to theirs as they chain up a dog to his kennel.”

Wilkie Collins book The Law and the Lady

Vol. I [Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1860] ( p. 194 https://books.google.com/books?id=wUN2KP79lhUC&pg=PA194) Also in The Cambridge Companion to Sensation Fiction edited by Andrew Mangham [Cambridge University Press, 2013, ISBN 1-107-51169-0] ( p. 82 https://books.google.com/books?id=rQZCAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA82) The King of Inventors: A Life of Wilkie Collins by Catherine Peters [Princeton University Press, 2014, ISBN 1-400-86345-7] ( p. 224 https://books.google.com/books?id=T0AABAAAQBAJ&pg=PA224) Cemetery of the Murdered Daughters: Feminism, History, and Ingeborg Bachmann by Sara Lennox [University of Massachusetts Press, 2006, ISBN 1-558-49552-5] ( p. 227 https://books.google.com/books?id=_9VjDtk5ss4C&pg=PA227) The Law and the Lady (1875)

Love, Women, Men, Friendship

“"What's your horse's name?""Horse.""Sophia waited for the joke, but it didn't come. "You call your horse 'Horse'?""He doesn't mind.""You should give him a noble name. Like Prince or Chief or something.""It might confuse him now.""Trust me. Anything is better than Horse. It's like naming a dog Dog.""I have a dog named Dog. Australian Cattle Dog." He turned, his expression utterly matter-of-fact. "Great herder.""And your mom didn't complain?""My mom named him."”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Sophia and Luke, Chapter 4 Sophia, p. 64
2009, The Longest Ride (2013)

Moms, Waiting, Horse

“Let the dogs of the empire bark, that's their job; ours is to battle to achieve the true liberation of our people.”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Hugo Chávez in retort to a comment by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/1017687B-D4D6-4C95-B46B-910CAEE66A9F.htm 2005

People

“Let the dog bark; the moon shall beam on.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

As quoted in Gholam R. Afkhami (2009) The life and times of the Shah, page 261
The 'dog' was a reference to Khomeini
Attributed

“Walthamstow Stadium: Where hundreds of men, who all look like my dad, come to watch some thin dogs running around.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Mind Control (1999–2000) or Inside Your Mind on DVD

Men

“The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and stanch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
And his musket moulds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new,
And the soldier was passing fair;
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
Kissed them and put them there.”

Eugene Field (1850–1895) American writer

Little Boy Blue http://www.amherst.edu/~rjyanco94/literature/eugenefield/poems/poemsofchildhood/littleboyblue.html, st. 1 Love Songs of Childhood (1894)

Boy, Kiss, Time

“My father…was a man who understood all dogs thoroughly and treated them like human beings.”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

The Third Policeman (1967)

“Alcibiades had a very handsome dog, that cost him seven thousand drachmas; and he cut off his tail, "that," said he, "the Athenians may have this story to tell of me, and may concern themselves no further with me."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

50 Alcibiades
Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders

“If the stars are suns and the earth is the earth and there are men only upon this earth and anything can put an end to anything and any dog does anything like anybody does it what is the difference between eternity and anything.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 3

Men, Star, Sun

“Who loves me, loves my dog.”
Qui me amat, amat et canem meam.

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) French abbot, theologian

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
Bernard quotes this as being a proverb in common use.

Love

“In my life I've been through plenty. when I was three years old, my parents got a dog. I was jealous of the dog, so they got rid of me.”

Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) American actor and comedian

Source: It's Not Easy Bein' Me: A Lifetime of No Respect But Plenty of Sex and Drugs (2004), p. 6

Life, Parent

“After all human beings have to live dogs too so as not to know that time is passing, that is the whole business of living to go on so they will not know that time is passing, that is why they get drunk that is why they like to go to war, during a war there is the most complete absence of the sense that time is passing a year of war lasts so much longer than any other year. After all that is what life is and that is the reason there is no Utopia, little or big young or old dog or man everybody wants every minute so filled that they are not conscious of that minute passing. It's just as well they do not think about it you have to be a genius to live in it and know it to exist in it and express it to accept it and deny it by creating it.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 4

Life, War, Business, Thinking

“When you are very young, you tend to accept standards for such momentous judgments as to whether a girl is beautiful; when you reach the age of experience you come to know beauty in the sense that “knowing” is to possess. Beauty does more than reflect light, it is the action of energy on form, glowing as a total function. This is singularly true of a grouse dog in his consecration to his bird.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

An Affair with Grouse (1982)

Age, Beauty, Girl, Bird

“The oddest thing is when children recognize me from Free Willy and their parents recognize me from Reservoir Dogs. The kids are, like, 'There's Glen!' and the parents are, like, 'Don't go near that guy!”

Michael Madsen (1957) American actor

Attributed

Children, Guy, Parent

“As dogs, cats, horses, and probably all the higher animals, even birds, as is stated on good authority, have vivid dreams, and this is shewn by their movements and voice, we must admit that they possess some power of imagination. … Few persons any longer dispute that animals possess some power of reasoning. Animals may constantly be seen to pause, deliberate, and resolve. It is a significant fact, that the more the habits of any particular animal are studied by a naturalist, the more he attributes to reason and the less to unlearnt instincts.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter II: "Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals", page 46 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=59&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image The Descent of Man (1871)

Dreams, Imagination, Cats, Bird

“Lionel: Oh no, we've drawn Judge Schneider.
Marge: Is that bad?
Lionel: Well, he's had it in for me ever since I kinda ran over his dog.
Marge: You did?
Lionel: Yeah…if you replace the word "kinda" with "repeatedly" and the word "dog" with "son"…”

Phil Hartman (1948–1998) Canadian American actor, comedian, screenwriter, and graphic artist

On the Simpsons, Lionel Hutz

“Give a dog a bone, leave a dog alone. Let a dog roam and he'll find his way home.”

DMX (rapper) (1970) American rapper and actor from New York

"Ruff Ryders' Anthem" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpHtEa2II_s (1998), It's Dark and Hell Is Hot 1990s

Way, Home

“Certainly, Vollard, but listen: will you have a special dish without butter prepared for me? Mind you, no flowers on the table, and you must have dinner at half past seven sharp. I know you won't have your cat around and please don't allow anybody to bring a dog. And if there are to be any women I hope they won't come reeking of perfume. How horrible all those odors are when there are so many things that really smell good, like toast - or even manure! Ah - (a short hesitation), and very few lights. My eyes, you know, my poor eyes!”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

"Early Encounters" (p. 20)
Quoted by Vollard who came to invite Degas for dinner, that evening
posthumous quotes, Degas: An Intimate Portrait' (1927)

Women, Hope, Cats, Flowers

“As he lat in the relative comfort of a hard-sleeeper cot - relative to a hard-seater, that is - the puffy, balding, beady-eyed, twisted mouth, middle-aged writer Mo Yan wasn't sleepy at all. The overhead lights went out as the train carried him into the night leaving only the dim yellow glare of the floor lights to see by. I know there are many similarities between me and this Mo Yan, but many contradictions as well. I'm a hermit crab, and Mo Yan is the shell I'm occupying. Mo Yan is the rain gear that protects me from storms, a dog hide to ward off the chilled winds, a mask I wear to seduce girls from good families. There are times when I feel that this Mo Yan is a heavy burden, but I can't seem to cast it off, just as a hermit crab cannot rid itself of its shell.”

Mo Yan book The Republic of Wine

Source: The Republic of Wine (1992), Chapter 10, Section 2

Age, Family, Feeling, Girl

“The League of Nations fell, not because its principles were wrong, but because they were not practised. A new world organization must be created. Its nucleus was in the United Nations, and its foundation stone the close cooperation of the British Commonwealth of Nations, the United States, and the U. S. S. R. … They wanted an organization embracing small as well as great nations, but on the three, on account of their strength, the greatest responsibility for preserving the peace of the world must fall. A world organization to preserve peace must have power at its disposal. So long as there was a danger of wolves the sheep-dog must have strong teeth. It was time that the nations of Europe should settle down as good citizens in a world of States. In the British Commonwealth of Nations it was shown how freedom was compatible with unity. If peace was to be preserved there must be some cession of sovereignty, but membership of a large organization did not conflict with the reasonable claims of nations to live their own lives.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Caxton Hall, London (12 December 1944), quoted in The Times (13 December 1944), p. 2.
War Cabinet

World, Peace, Freedom, Strong

“You better go shopping for that dog.”

Pat Sajak (1946) American television host

2000s Source: Wheel of Fortune, aired October 14, 2008, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_rLkEXU4o4 when revealing the prize to Michelle Loewenstein, the game's first million-dollar winner. Her husband had said they would use the grand prize to "get another dog".

“So I will find my fears and face them
or I will cower like a dog
I will kick and scream or kneel and plead
I'll fight like hell to hide that I've given up”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Another Travelin' Song
I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005)

Fear, Hell, Fight

“"My mother is a ventriloquist – but not professionally. For ten years I thought the dog was telling me to kill my father." Waiting a beat, Liebman adds, "I got my brother to do it."”

Wendy Liebman (1961) American comedian

Wendy Liebman page http://delafont.com/comedians/wendy-liebman.htm Richard De La Font Agency, Inc. web site. (url accessed on October 22, 2008)

Waiting

“As late as 1959, a friend and colleague of Albert Schweitzer defended his unsterile hospital in the following terms: Now to the domestic animals at the Hospital. People have been shocked by the informality with which animals and people mix, and although it is perhaps not always defensible on hygienic grounds, the mixture adds considerably to the charm of the place. The writer was a dental surgeon from New York, who would obviously have had a fit if a goat or chicken had wandered into his New York surgery. He knew full well that at Schweitzer’s hospital “the goats, dogs and cats visit hospital wards teeming with microbial life of the most horrifying varieties,” but he defended their habitation with Africans because that was part of the culture and charm that had to be preserved!”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 385

Life, People, Cats, Animals

“Don't you know there is no one in the streets
and no one in the houses?There are only eyes in the windows.
If you don't have a place to sleep,
knock on a door and it will open,
open up to a certain point
and you will see that it is cold inside,
and that that house is empty
and wants nothing to do with you,
your stories mean nothing,
and if you insist on being gentle,
the dog and the cat will bite you.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

¿Sabes que en las calles no hay nadie
y adentro de las casas tampoco?Sólo hay ojos en las ventanas.
Si no tienes dònde dormir
toca una puerta y te abrirán,
te abrirán hasta cierto punto
y verás que hace frío adentro,
que aquella casa está vacía,
y no quiere nada contigo,
no valen nada tus historias,
y si insistes con tu ternura
te muerden el perro y el gato.
Soliloquio en Tinieblas (Soliloquy at Twilight) from Estravagario (Book of Vagaries) (1958).

Cats, Sleep, Housing

“Many Christians who agree that harming a dog or cat is wrong think nothing of harming cows, pigs, chickens, fish and other creatures. We need to understand that if we’re eating meat, we are paying people to be cruel to animals. For the simple reasons that all animals are creatures beloved by God and that God created them with a capacity for pain and suffering, we should adopt a vegetarian diet.”

John Dear (1959) Catholic priest from the United States

Christianity and Vegetarianism (1990)

God, Pain, People, Cats

“They never forgot
That even the most dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.”

W. H. Auden Musée des Beaux Arts

Musée des Beaux Arts (1938)

Life, Tree, Horse

“It was that whole Wizard of Oz moment. We all look at these politicans – oh wow, they're so powerful - and then it was the little dog pulling the curtain away.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Attributed, "We Steal Secrets" 2013 Movie

“He gave a cry. At the last, falling backward, his face appearing to us for a second upside down before he was smothered on the floor by a pile of white uniforms, he let himself cry out: A sound of cornered-animal fear and hate and surrender and defiance, that if you ever trailed coon or cougar or lynx is like the last sound the treed and shot and falling animal makes as the dogs get him, when he finally doesn't care any more about anything but himself and his dying.”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), Ch. 29

Hate, Fear, Appearance, Animals

“Even in common people, conceit has the virtue of making them cheerful; the man who thinks his wife, his baby, his house, his horse, his dog, and himself severally unequalled, is almost sure to be a good-humored person, though liable to be tedious at times.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

People, Thinking, Time, Horse

““We have thought you were too rule-abiding to be a good ruler—a paradox, you see—but perhaps we were wrong.”
“But you're the Witness for the Judiciate!” Maia protested, which made everyone laugh.
"We said rule, not law,” Pashavar said tartly. “There is a difference, Serenity. An emperor who breaks laws is a mad dog and a danger, but an emperor who will never break a rule is nearly as bad, for he will never be able to recognize when a law must be changed.””

Sarah Monette book The Goblin Emperor

Source: The Goblin Emperor (2014), Chapter 23, "The Opposition of the Court" (p. 294)

Law, Change, Madness

“77. When a dog is a-drowning every one offers him drink.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Drink

“My wife is in Portugal with the dog. The dog is with my wife so the city of London is safe, the big threat is away. [After his Yorkshire Terrier had issues with customs. ]”

José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/funny_old_game/7004282.stm Chelsea FC

“Music has to do with sounds, so we need to find them somewhere and it is preferred to find musical ones. You have two sources for sounds: noises, which always tell you something — a door cracking, a dog barking, the thunder, the storm; and then you have instruments. An instrument tells you, 'la-la-la-la.' Music has to find a passage between noises and instruments. It has to escape. It has to find a compromise and an evasion at the same time; something that would not be dramatic because that has no interest to us, but something that would be more interesting than sounds like Do-Re-Mi-Fa…”

Pierre Schaeffer (1910–1995) French musicologist

Electronic Musician magazine, December 1986
Interviews

Music, Time

“I have for so many years entertained a firm conviction that we were going to the dogs that I have got to be quite accustomed to the expectation.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Source: Letter to H. W. Acland (4 February 1867), from G. Cecil, The Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury. Volume I, p. 211

“I got the idea [for Earthlings] because I was filming some public service announcements. It was mostly domestic animals, dogs and cats, and when they were killed on the street or euthanized in the shelters, they were put into this room that resembles a large refrigerator. But when I saw them piled up in there, it suddenly made me think of meat in a refrigerator. Even though they looked nothing like meat, there was this parallel – dead animals kept in a fridge – and that made me think of cows and chickens and pigs and eggs and milk, and so on. That was the beginning of Earthlings really, the first spark of inspiration.”

Shaun Monson American filmmaker

“Exclusive: Earthlings' Shaun Monson On New Iberia Research Center And More”, interview with Ecorazzi (25 March 2009) http://www.ecorazzi.com/2009/03/25/exclusive-earthlings-shaun-monson-on-new-iberia-research-center-and-more/.

Cats, Idea, Thinking, Animals

“And so they've killed our Ferdinand,' said the charwoman to Mr Švejk, who had left military service years before, after having been finally certified by an army medical board as an imbecile, and now lived by selling dogs — ugly, mongrel monstrosities whose pedigrees he forged.
Apart from this occupation he suffered from rheumatism and was at this very moment rubbing his knees with Elliman's embrocation.
'Which Ferdinand, Mrs Müller?' he asked, going on with the massaging. 'I know two Ferdinands. One is a messenger at Průša's, the chemist's, and once by mistake he drank a bottle of hair oil there. And the other is Ferdinand Kokoška who collects dog manure. Neither of them is any loss.”

Jaroslav Hašek book The Good Soldier Švejk

'Oh no, sir, it's his Imperial highness, the Archduke Ferdinand, from Konopiště, the fat churchy one.'
First lines
The Good Soldier Švejk (1921)

Suffering, Loss

“It is a better world with some buffalo left in it, a richer world with some gorgeous canyons unmarred by signboards, hot-dog stands, super highways, or high-tension lines, undrowned by power or irrigation reservoirs. If we preserved as parks only those places that have no economic possibilities, we would have no parks. And in the decades to come, it will not be only the buffalo and the trumpeter swan who need sanctuaries. Our own species is going to need them too. It needs them now.”

Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) American historian, writer, and environmentalist

This is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country and its Magic Rivers is a collection of essays and photographs edited by Wallace Stegner and published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1955. This passage is from the collection's first essay, "The Marks of Human Passage", which is by Stegner (page 17).

World

“One's a dog-eat-dog world, and the other one's just the opposite.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,995029,00.html
Running a Business vs. Running a City

World

“Why, if all that were so — if the enterprise were to be a failure from the start — was there any sense in starting it? "Ah," the Lord said, "you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it."”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

Source: Isaiah's Job (1936), I

Failure, Sense

“The bottom line is that people don't have the right to manipulate or to breed dogs and cats… If people want toys, they should buy inanimate objects. If they want companionship, they should seek it with their own kind.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

Animals, 1993 May 1.
1990s

People, Cats

“Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For God hath made them so;
Let bears and lions growl and fight,
For 't is their nature too.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Song 16: "Against Quarrelling and Fighting".
1710s, Divine Songs Attempted in the Easy Language of Children (1715)

God, Nature, Fight

“In the last few years there has been a harvest of books and lectures about the "Mysterious Universe." The inconceivable magnitudes with which astronomy deals produce a sense of awe which lends itself to a poetic and philosophical treatment. "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy hands, the moon and the starts, whuch thou hast ordained: what is man that thou art mindful of him? The literary skill with which this branch of science has been exploited compels one's admiration, but alos, a little, one's sense of the ridiculous. For other facts than those of astronomy, oother disciplines than of mathematics, can produce the same lively feelings of awe and reverence: the extraordinary finenness of their adjustments to the world outside: the amazing faculties of the human mind, of which we know neither whence it comes not whither it goes. In some fortunate people this reverence is produced by the natural bauty of a landscape, by the majesty of an ancient building, by the heroism of a rescue party, by poetry, or by music. God is doubtless a Mathematician, but he is also a Physiologist, an Engineer, a Mother, an Architect, a Coal Miner, a Poet, and a Gardener. Each of us views things in his own peculiar war, each clothes the Creator in a manner which fits into his own scheme. My God, for instance, among his other professions, is an Inventor: I picture him inventing water, carbon dioxide, and haemoglobin, crabs, frogs, and cuttle fish, whales and filterpassing organisms ( in the ratio of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1 in size), and rejoicing greatly over these weird and ingenious things, just as I rejoice greatly over some simple bit of apparatus. But I would nor urge that God is only an Inventor: for inventors are apt, as those who know them realize, to be very dull dogs. Indeed, I should be inclined rather to imagine God to be like a University, with all its teachers and professors together: not omittin the students, for he obviously possesses, judging from his inventions, that noblest human characteristic, a sense of humour.”

Archibald Hill (1886–1977) English physiologist and biophysicist

The Ethical Dilemma of Science and Other Writings https://books.google.com.mx/books?id=zaE1AAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false (1960, Cap 1. Scepticism and Faith, p. 41)

God, War, People, Books

“There is very little thanks in history. Dog eat dog.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

History

“Those who live with pigs often speak of them as we normally speak of dogs—intelligent, loyal, and above all, affectionate. Each one, I am continually reminded by people who know them, is a complete individual, like no other pig.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Source: The Pig Who Sang to the Moon (2003), Ch. 1, p. 52

People, Intelligence

“And I love walking someone else’s dog. I don’t have the luxury of having a dog myself because I travel too much, but I love walking and cuddling somebody else’s dog. I just came back from the shelter today and they let me walk three dogs at lunchtime. It was great.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

Satya, January, 2001 http://www.satyamag.com/jan01/newkirk.html. On pets

Love, Travel

“The name-parted-in-the-middle aristocrats act in just the same way. They don’t want to be annoyed with firecrackers and the Declaration of Independence, and when they see the Fourth comin’ they hustle off to the woods like my dog. p. 71”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 17, Tammany’s Patriotism

Way, Parting

“In a jungle town
Where the sun beats down
To the rage of man and beast,
The English garb
Of the English sahib
Merely gets a bit more creased.
In Bangkok
At twelve'o'clock
They foam at the mouth and run,
But mad dogs and Englishmen
Go out in the midday sun.”

Noel Coward (1899–1973) English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer

Mad Dogs and Englishmen (1930)

Rage, Sun, Madness

“Never follow a dog act. You know you're on the skids when you play yourself in the movie version of your life.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Erica Jong's father (a musician, songwriter and later business man), his two pieces of advice for her. Given in the Times Literary Supplement, 7 October 1994, page 44.
Other

Life

“My mother, whom I loved very much, had trouble with me. I had very good school certificates. But I tormented her with horribly stinky collections. It was not enough for me at home to have a dog, a cat, a canary, a fish, and even a white mouse, which loved to walk around the apartment, although it lived in a cage. I added the protozoa to this menagerie. Traditional definitions regarded these small organisms – such as, for example, amoebae, flagellates, sponges, algae – as single-celled. What in these asexually reproducing animals or plants could intrigue the little boy so much that he permanently endured this abomination (as the mother would say) home?! After all, neither the request nor the threat of this exceptionally tolerant woman, who carried out her home diligently on a daily basis, did not help. A trip to the ponds, or actually to the stagnant at Bonarka – where today is Mateczny Roundabout – were exciting for the little boy. And even more he enjoyed moments when he could watch for hours what was happening in aquariums, jars or cages.”

Włodzimierz Ptak (1928–2019) immunologist

Bętkowska, Teresa (August–September 2010). "Mistrz niszowej dyscypliny" http://www2.almamater.uj.edu.pl/126/17.pdf (PDF). Alma Mater (in Polish). Kraków: Jagiellonian University (126–127): pp. 41–46.

Love, School, Home, Boy

“A work of art must narrate something that does not appear within its outline. The objects and figures represented in it must likewise poetically tell you of something that is far away from them and also of what their shapes materially hide from us. A certain dog painted by Courbet (French 19th century painter) is like the story of a poetic and romantic hunt.”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

1919
as quoted in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 440
1908 - 1920, On Mystery and Creation, Paris 1913

Art, Appearance, Painting

“I like a bit of a mongrel myself, whether it's a man or a dog; they're the best for every day.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Episode I
1910s, Misalliance (1910)

“Achilles Peleus Son's destructive Rage,
Great Goddess, sing, which did the Greeks engage
In many Woes, and mighty Hero's Ghosts
Sent down untimely to the Stygian Coasts:
Devouring Vultures on their Bodies prey'd,
And greedy Dogs, (so was Jove's Will obey'd;)
Because Great Agamemnon fell at odds
With stern Achilles, Off-spring of the Gods.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

Book I, opening lines
Homer His Iliads Translated (1660)

God, Spring, Rage, Singing

“I intend to make this day forward the first day of the rest of my life. We can change our lives. You say, 'Well, what's wrong with your life, Michael?' Well, it's not that there's anything wrong with my life, but it's not what I want it to be. I don't feel that I'm inspiring people in the way I want to inspire them. You see, you can inspire through hate; you can inspire through love, hope, humor – the positives. I look at the history of the world, and I look at the world today, and I realize that if we don't inspire each other through positive attributes – love, hope and humor – we're gonna descend into the barbarism of the Left and the barbarism of ISIS. You like me to be hard, you like me to be tough, you like me to give you the breaking news, you like me to be cynical, you like me to analytical, you like me to give you stuff that you don't hear anywhere else – I get that. But there's a limit to that. There's a lot of area beyond all that.I think of Christmas. Christianity is the religion of peace. Christianity is the true religion of peace. 'Turn the other cheek.' 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' These are messages that come from Christianity. What can you do in an age of deceit and lies and terror? You can go to church again. However un-needing you think you really are, you know in your heart that there's something missing in you. You know that you crave something greater. Because the human being is not a dog. We are unique creatures. And we need something different than the bear, the dog, the snake and the eagle. What is that thing that we need? It's that 'thing' called God.The media has promulgated the idea, and promoted the idea, that we only need food and fornication. And so when people are empty that's what they seek. And when they are really empty, what happens? They become drug addicts. They start with marijuana, they end up with heroin, crack, you name it. As God has been driven out of America, drugs have entered America. What does an empty soul look to do? An empty soul looks to fill itself. Just as an empty vessel needs to be filled with a liquid to be complete, an empty human being needs to fill itself to be complete. And how does it fill itself? I know, again, many of you will laugh because you're cynical; it's through those things I'm talking about – inspiration. Do you think a musician can play one day without inspiration from somewhere? The greatest artists in the history of the world were not drug-addicts. They were usually God-addicts. Look at the greatest art in history, you'll find most of them were super religious people, who literally saw God in their living room, and they took the power of God and that was transmitted through the paintbrush, or through that piece of marble. How could a man like Rodin take a piece of inert stone, and inside that stone see the essence of the human form, and sculpt from that block of inert stone, a marble, the portrait of a human being that looks so real – a hundred years later I go and look at them in the museum, and literally inside that carved eye I can see the person; how is that possible? How? It's a different show than I've ever done in my 21 years, because each day to me – I must tell you – I see as my last day, my last day on Earth.”

Michael Savage (1942) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, and Author

The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2015

Love, Life, God, Hate

“"Like a dog!" he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

Source: The Trial (1920), Ch. 10, end of the book

“I have been told that at school I was the sort of simpleton who suffered from dux-disease. It is reckoned in Iceland that those who are afflicted by this disease can never become anything other than drunkards, journalists, or junior clerks... I was spiritually as well as physically in a state of suspended adolescence. Lessons came welling up out of me as if I were talking in my sleep. I could reel off the bones in a dog at the drop of a hat, any time at all, just as if I had them in my pockets; if I had been woken up at three o'clock in the morning, I would have detailed each and every one of them, just as if I had been lying on them.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

Disease, School, Lying, Sleep

“Mad Dog Time is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time. Oh, I've seen bad movies before. But they usually made me care about how bad they were. Watching Mad Dog Time is like waiting for the bus in a city where you're not sure they have a bus line…Mad Dog Time should be cut into free ukulele picks for the poor.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mad-dog-time-1996 of Mad Dog Time (29 November 1996) Reviews, Zero star reviews

Time, Waiting, Madness

“When I went to college, I went to study Veterinary Medicine, which I still study. But I had to take classes with the Animal Science people in the college of Agriculture. … One class I had to take they made the students from part of the class go into a chicken coop and pick out a live chicken and slaughter it themselves. Then we were supposed to take it home and eat it. And I refused to do it. So I ended up getting a C at the class, even though I had As in everything else. … I also had to take a class where I would take care of animals, pigs and cows, and I got to know them. I actually had a cow that I took care of, raised from when she was a baby and I had her till she was about 800 pounds. She would run up to me, she knew me well, just like a dog. She was exactly like a dog. It was sort of the same with the pigs, the babies knew me. And after I had to go in and see what happened to them, it totally broke my heart and it made me sick to my stomach. … There's no way, you know, if you're human and you have a normal brain and mind and feelings, that you can see what I saw and still eat them and allow them to be slaughtered and be ok with it.”

Lauren Anderson (model) (1980) American model

"Playmate Declares War", video interview with PETA (24 August 2007) https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2tstr.

People, Way, Feeling, Home

““Do your neighbors burn one another alive?” was how Fraa Orolo began his conversation with Artisan Flec.
“Do your shamans walk around on stilts?” Fraa Orolo asked, reading from a leaf that, judging by its brownness, was at least five centuries old. Then he looked up and added helpfully, “You might call them pastors or witch doctors.”
“When a child gets sick, do you pray? Sacrifice to a painted stick? Or blame it on an old lady?”
“Do you fancy you will see your dead dogs and cats in some sort of afterlife?””

Neal Stephenson book Anathem

Part 1, Provener; The questionnaire, in use for 1,100 years, is used once every ten years to determine if civilization outside the monastic compound is beginning to regress.
Anathem (2008)

Cats, Reading, Painting, Dead

“A wolf was no less a wolf because a whim of chance caused him to run with the watch-dogs.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"Beyond the Black River" (1935)

Wolf, Chance

“If I had 4 fust rate dogs i would name the best one "Doubtful" and the other 3 "Useless."”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

“Have you ever seen a one trick pony in the field so happy and free/
If you've ever seen a one trick pony then you've seen me.
Have you ever seen a one legged dog makin' his way down the street?
If you've ever seen a one legged dog then you've seen me.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"The Wrestler"
Song lyrics, Working on a Dream (2009)

Way, Happiness

“You never see your dog running nonstop around and around in a circle for an hour. If he did, you'd think there was something wrong with him. Instead, he'll chase something, roll around, sprint, rest, mix things up. Animal play has a purpose, and it's not hard to surmise that human play should as well.”

Erwan Le Corre (1971)

Bill Katovsky (2012). 1,001 Pearls of Runners' Wisdom: Advice and Inspiration for the Open Road, Skyhorse Publishing.

Thinking, Animals

“Both dogs and humans know when we’ve been caged.”

John Twelve Hawks American writer

Against Authority: Freedom and the Rise of Surveillance States (2014)

“Like a hog, or dog in the manger, he doth only keep it because it shall do nobody else good, hurting himself and others.”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

Section 2, member 3, subsection 12.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I

Hurt

“I threw big cowardly Hall on his belly I straddled him and rooted both spurs onto his thighs he roared like a big calf attacked by dogs … I used to trip him and let him take a mouth ful of dust now and again as he was as helpless as a big guano after leaving a dead bullock or a horse.”

Ned Kelly (1855–1880) Australian bushranger

Jerilderie Letter (1879)

Horse, Dead

“There is time, and you must take it, to lay your hand on your dog's head as you walk past him lying on the floor or on his settle, time to talk with him, to remember with him, time to please him, time you can't buy back once he's gone”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

October Fever (1989)

Lying, Time, Past

“I want provocation. People should take to the streets. Smash those dogs, and tell them: "you traitors will bring us the British."”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Statement (8 March 2011), as quoted in "Libya on the Line: An interactive timeline Browse through a collection of conversations between Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam and other senior Libyan officials" at Aljazeera (11 May 2012) http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/spotlight/libyaontheline/2012/05/201251173614897923.html Al Jazeera's mobile phone wiretaps

People