Of all the animals on earth, none has made the impact on the human heart quite as much as the dog. The following observations demonstrate why the dog has justifiably earned the title “man’s best friend.”

1. “Cats look down on you; dogs look up to you; but pigs look you in the eye as equals.” — Winston Churchill
2. “Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.” — Mark Twain
3. “Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.” – Orhan Pamuk
4. “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.” –- Charles Schulz
5. “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
6. “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 a man.” — Mark Twain
7. “I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods: happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.” – Mark Haddon
8. “Dogs’ lives are too short. Their only fault, really.” – Agnes Sligh Turnbull
9. “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 A. Caras
10. “When an 85-pound mammal licks your tears away, then tries to sit on your lap, it’s hard to feel sad.” – Kristan Higgins
11. “The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, not man’s.” — Mark Twain
12. “Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.” – Roger Caras
13. “The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.” – Charles De Gaulle
14. “The gift which I am sending you is called a dog, and is, in fact, the most precious and valuable possession of mankind.” – Theodorus Gaza (Greek humanist/translator of Aristotle)
15. “Scratch a dog and you’ll find a permanent job.” – Franklin P. Jones
16. “The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, not man’s.” – Mark Twain
17. “To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.” – Aldous Huxley
18. “Anybody who doesn’t know what soap tastes like never washed a dog.” – Franklin P. Jones
19. “Happiness is a warm puppy.” – Charles Schulz
20. “No animal I know of can consistently be more of a friend and companion than a dog.” – Stanley Leinwoll
21. “Ever consider what our dogs must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul, chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we’re the greatest hunters on Earth!” – Anne Tyler
22. “A dog is the only thing on Earth that loves you more than he loves himself.” – Josh Billings
23. “Such short little lives our pets have to spend with us, and they spend most of it waiting for us to come home each day.” – John Grogan
24. “Did you know that there are over 300 words for ‘love’ in canine?” – Gabrielle Zevin
25. “There is no faith which has never yet been broken, except that of a truly faithful dog.” –  Konrad Lorenz
26. “You can usually tell that a man is good if he has a dog who loves him.” – W. Bruce Cameron
27. “I don’t understand people who don’t touch their pets. Their cat or dog is called a pet for a reason.” – Jarod Kintz
28. “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” – Harry Truman
29. “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 A. Caras
30. “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
31. “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
32. “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
33. “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.
34. “It is amazing how much love and laughter they bring into our lives and even how much closer we become with each other because of them.” – John Grogan
35. “Dogs are wise. They crawl away into a quiet corner and lick their wounds and do not rejoin the world until they are whole once more.” – Agatha Christie
36. “I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.” – John Steinbeck
37. “If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.” – James Thurber
38. “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
39. “We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment to animals.” – Immanuel Kant
40. “The greatest fear dogs know is the fear that you will not come back when you go out the door without them.” – Stanley Coren
41. “Fall in love with a dog, and in many ways you enter a new orbit, a universe that features not just new colors but new rituals, new rules, a new way of experiencing attachment.” – Caroline Knapp
42. “Love—that which biologists, nervous about being misunderstood, call ‘attachment’—fuels the bond between dog and master or mistress.” – John Bradshaw
43. “I think dogs are the most amazing creatures; they give unconditional love. For me, they are the role model for being alive.” – Gilda Radner
44. “I have found that when you are deeply troubled, there are things you get from the silent devoted companionship of a dog that you can get from no other source.” – Doris Day
45. “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
46. “Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.” – Ann Landers
47. “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.” – Maurice Maeterlinck
48. “I sometimes look into the face of my dog Stan and see a wistful sadness and existential angst, when all he is actually doing is slowly scanning the ceiling for flies.” – Merrill Markoe
49. “The capacity for love that makes dogs such rewarding companions has a flip-side: They find it difficult to cope without us. Since we humans programmed this vulnerability, it’s our responsibility to ensure that our dogs do not suffer as a result.” – John Bradshaw
50. “A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance and to turn around three times before lying down.” – Robert Benchley
51. “My father… was a man who understood all dogs thoroughly and treated them like human beings.” – Flann O’Brien
52. “What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
53. “The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself, too.” – Samuel Butler
54. “My little dog—a heartbeat at my feet.” – Edith Wharton
55. “Every dog has his day, unless he loses his tail, then he has a weak-end.” – June Carter Cash
56. “The bond with a true dog is as lasting as the ties of this earth will ever be.” – Konrad Lorenz
57. “Life is a series of dogs.” – George Carlin
58. “The world would be a nicer place if everyone had the ability to love as unconditionally as a dog.” – M.K. Clinton
59. “You know, a dog can snap you out of any kind of bad mood that you’re in faster than you can think of.” – Jill Abramson
60. “Before you get a dog, you can’t quite imagine what living with one might be like; afterward, you can’t imagine living any other way.” – Caroline Knapp
61. “Not Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Astor together could have raised money enough to buy a quarter share in my little dog.” – Ernest Thompson Seton
62. “My idea of absolute happiness is to be in bed on a rainy day with my blankie, my cat, and my dog.” – Anne Lamott
63. “No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as much as the dog does.” – Christopher Morley
64. “No matter how little money and how few possessions you own, having a dog makes you feel rich.” – Louis Sabin
65. “Old dogs, like old shoes, are comfortable. They might be a bit out of shape and a little worn around the edges, but they fit well.” – Bonnie Wilcox
66. “In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn’t merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.” – Edward Hoagland
67. “Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.” – Alexander Pope
68. “Dogs have a way of finding the people who need them, and filling an emptiness we didn’t ever know we had.” – Thom Jones
69. “I have found that when you are deeply troubled, there are things you get from the silent devoted companionship of a dog that you can get from no other source.” – Doris Day
70. “A well-trained dog will make no attempt to share your lunch. He will just make you feel so guilty that you cannot enjoy it.” – Helen Thomson
71. “Some of our greatest historical and artistic treasures we place with curators in museums; others we take for walks.” – Roger A. Caras
72. “Nobody can fully understand the meaning of love unless he’s owned a dog. A dog can show you more honest affection with a flick of his tail than a man can gather through a lifetime of handshakes.” – Gene Hill
73. “I care not for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not better for it.” – Abraham Lincoln
74. “The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.” – Andy Rooney
75. “I’m a lot less cranky when it’s just me and my dog.” – Bob Peterson
76. “Even the tiniest Poodle or Chihuahua is still a wolf at heart.” – Dorothy Hinshaw Patent
77. “The poor dog, in life the firmest friend. The first to welcome, foremost to defend.” – Lord Byron
78. “I have caught more ills from people sneezing over me and giving me virus infections than from kissing dogs.” – Barbara Woodhouse
79. “Intelligent dogs rarely want to please people whom they do not respect.” – W.R. Koehler
80. “You think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
81. “I once decided not to date a guy because he wasn’t excited to meet my dog. I mean, this was like not wanting to meet my mother.” – Bonnie Schachter
82. “My tragedy is that all I want is a dog, and yet I have been cursed with cats all my life.” – Michael Sheen
83. “The one absolutely 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.” – George Graham Vest
84. “The dog has got more fun out of man than man has got out of the dog, for man is the more laughable of the two animals.” – James Thurber
85. “The only creatures that are evolved enough to convey pure love are dogs and infants.” – Johnny Depp
86. “You can say any foolish thing to a dog, and the dog will give you a look that says, ‘Wow, you’re right! I never would’ve thought of that!’” – Dave Barry
87. “Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.” – Emily Dickinson

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