Quotes About Dogs and Friendship

These 25 quotes about dogs and friendship are by authors whose surnames start with "T," "U," "V," "W," "X," "Y" and "Z." Many will make you laugh, some will make you cry, and others will make you think about the relationship you have with your dog. But they'll all help you celebrate having your dog as a friend.

Dog lovers are a good breed themselves.

Gladys Taber

I class myself with Rin Tin Tin. At the end of the Depression, people were perhaps looking for something to cheer them up. The fell in love with a dog, and with a little girl.

Shirley Temple

The dog was cold and in pain. But being only a dog it did not occur to him to trot off home to the comfort of the library fire and leave his master to fend for himself.

Albert Payson Terhune

Inside every Newfoundland, Boxer, Elkhound and Great Dane is a puppy longing to climb on to your lap.

Helen Thomson

We are two travelers, 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

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, Pudd'nhead Wilson

He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion.

Unknown Author

I hope to be the kind of person my dog thinks I am.

Unknown Author

If you can resist treating a rich friend better than a poor friend,
If you can face the world without lies and deceit,
If you can say honestly that deep in your heart you have no prejudice against creed, color, religion or politics,
Then, my friend, you are almost as good as your dog.

Unknown Author

One reason a dog can be such a comfort when you're feeling blue is that he doesn't try to find out why.

Unknown Author

You never realize a dog is a man's best friend until you start betting on horses.

Unknown Author

Greyfriars Bobby.
Died 14th Jan 1872.
Aged 16 years.
Let his loyalty & devotion
Be a lesson to us all.

(The inscription on Bobby's headstone, as tribute to the Skye terrier who slept on his master's grave every night for fourteen years. American donors erected the tribute in the 1930s.)

Unknown Author

Stick around any place long enough and chances are you'll be taken for granted. Hang around for 20,000 years wagging your tail and being man's (and woman's) best friend, and you'll be taken for granted big time.

Lynn Van Matre

The best friend man has in the world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son, or daughter, that he has reared with loving care, may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and good name may become traitors to their faith. The money a man has he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps when he needs it most. A man's reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees when success is with us may be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud upon our head.

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. A man's dog stands by him in prosperity and poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground when the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only to be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer, he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounters with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince.

When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wing, and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens.

If fortune drives his master forth, an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him, to guard him against danger, to fight against his enemies. And when that last scene of all comes, and death takes his master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there, by the graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad, but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true, even in death.

Senator George Graham Vest, speaking to a jury about Old Drum, shot in 1869

I know that I have had friends who would never have vexed or betrayed me, if they had walked on all fours.

Horace Walpole

If my dog is barred by the heavenly guard
We'll both of us brave the heat!

W. Dayton Wedgefarth

I have had a long unabashed love affair with dogs that stretches back to early childhood.

Caspar Weinberger

My little old dog: a heart-beat at my feet.

Edith Wharton

I can still see my first dog. For six years he met me at the same place after school and convoyed me home—a service he thought up himself. A boy doesn't forget that sort of association.

E.B. White

Our dogs, like our shoes, are comfortable. They might be a bit out of shape and a little worn around the edges, but they fit well.

Bonnie Wilcox, Old Dogs, Old Friends

The dog without his master was like a body without a soul.

Mary E. Wilkins

There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.

Bern Williams

They give unconditional love and undying loyalty in return for regular meals and an occasional pat on the head.

Jon Winokur

Even his sleep was full of dreams. He dreamt as he had not dreamt since the old days at Three Mill Cross—of hares starting from the long grass; of pheasants rocketing up with long tails streaming, of partridge rising with a whirr from the stubble. He dreamt that he was hunting, that he was chasing some spotted spaniel, who fled, who escaped him.... Then he opened his eyes. There were no hares, and no partridges; no whips cracking.... There was only Mr. Browning in the armchair talking to Miss Barrett on the sofa.

Virginia Woolf, in a biography of Flush, a cocker spaniel, owned by Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Flush was dognapped and held for ransom. Barrett (before her marriage) negotiated directly for Flush's release due to a lack of funds to pay the ransom.

Of the memory of the dog, and the recollection of kindness received, there are a thousand stories, from the return of Ulysses to the present day, and we have seen enough of that faithful animal to believe most of them.

William Youatt