100 of the Best Dog Quotes

Last updated on October 18, 2023 By Puppy Leaks 39 Comments

Dogs have always been such an important part of my life, and to help honor the love and joy they bring to our lives I thought it would be a nice idea to put together a list of my favorite dog quotes.

All of these quotes about dogs hold a special place in my heart, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. From the funny to the inspirational, here’s 100 of the best dog quotes.

If you’re looking for even more dog quotes be sure to check our list of 30 funny dog quotes, 25 heartwarming dog quotes & 30 powerful quotes about losing a pet.

100 of the Best Dog Quotes

“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

“A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.” – Josh Billings

“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

“The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.”  – Charles de Gaulle

“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

“To err is human — to forgive, canine.” – Author Unknown

“The bond with a true dog is as lasting as the ties of this earth will ever be.” – Konrad Lorenz

“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

“If dogs could talk, perhaps we would find it as hard to get along with them as we do with people.”  – Capek

“The world would be a nicer place if everyone had the ability to love as unconditionally as a dog.” – M.K. Clinton

“Money can buy you a fine dog, but only love can make him wag his tail.”  -Kinky Friedman

“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.”  – Will Rogers

“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

“Dogs are great. Bad dogs, if you can really call them that, are perhaps the greatest of them all.”  -John Grogan

“No matter how little money and how few possessions you own, having a dog makes you feel rich.” – Louis Sabin

“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

“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

“Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.”  – Ann Landers

“My little dog – a heartbeat at my feet.” – Edith Wharton

“Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.”- Orhan Pamuk

“Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.”  – Alexander Pope

“Dogs have a way of finding the people who need them, and filling an emptiness we didn’t ever know we had.” – Thom Jones

“No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as much as the dog does.”  – Christopher Morley

“Dogs teach us a very important lesson in life: The mail man is not to be trusted”  – Sian Ford

“A dog desires affection more than its dinner. Well – almost.”  – Charlotte Gray

“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

“I think dogs are the most amazing creatures. The give unconditional love. For me they are the role model for being alive.”  – Gilda Radner

“You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog.” – Harry Truman

“Dogs come into out lives to teach us about love, they depart to teach us about loss. A new dog never replaces an old dog. It merely expands the heart.” – Author Unknown

“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

“I care not for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not better for it.”  – Abraham Lincoln

“Dogs never bite me. Just humans.”  – Marilyn Monroe

“What do dogs do on their day off? Can’t lie around – that’s their job!”  – George Carlin

“The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.”  – Andy Rooney

“I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that dogs think humans are nuts.”  – John Steinbeck

“The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not mans.”  – Mark Twain

“If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater suggest that he wear a tail.” – Fran Lebowitz

“I’m a lot less cranky when it’s just me and my dog.” – Bob Peterson

“If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.”  – Albert Einstein

“Everyone thinks they have the best dog. And none of them are wrong.” – W.R. Purche

“My idea of absolute happiness is to be in bed on a rainy day with my blankie, my cat, and my dog.” – Anne Lamott

“The poor dog, in life the firmest friend. The first to welcome, foremost to defend.”  – Lord Byron

“When an 85 pound mammal licks your tears away, and then tries to sit on your lap, it’s hard to feel sad.” – Kristan Higgins

“I have caught more ills from people sneezing over me and giving me virus infections than from kissing dogs.”  – Barbara Woodhouse

“It’s tough to stay married. My wife kisses the dog on the lips, yet she won’t drink from my glass.” – Rodney Dangerfield

“There is no faith which has never yet been broken except that of a truly faithful dog.”  – Konrad Lorenz

“Intelligent dogs rarely want to please people whom they do not respect.”  – W.R. Koehler

“Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think that is how dogs spend their lives.”  – Sue Murphy

“Even the tiniest Poodle or Chihuahua is still a wolf at heart.”  – Dorothy Hinshaw

“What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”  – Dwight Eisenhower

“Dogs’ lives are too short. Their only fault, really.”  – Agnes Turnbull

“The greatest fear dogs know is the fear that you will not come back when you go out the door without them.”  – Stanley Coren

“A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.”  – Robert Benchley

“Some of our greatest historical and artistic treasures we place with curators in museums; others we take for walks.”  – Roger A. Caras

“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

“Such short little lives our pets have to spend with us, and they spend most of it watching for us to come home each day.” – John Grogan

“A lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me.”  – Barack Obama

“The dog always dies. Go to the library and pick out a book with an award sticker and a dog on the cover. Trust me, that dog is going down.”  – Gordon Korman

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

“Reason number 106 why dogs are smarter than humans: once you leave the litter, you sever contact with your mothers.”  – Jodi Picoult

“Hounds follow those who feed them.”  – Otto von Bismarck

“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

“My cats inspire me daily. They inspire me to get a dog!”  – Greg Curtis

“Life is a series of dogs.”  – George Carlin

“There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.” – Ben Williams

“Dogs have more love than integrity. They’ve been true to us, yes, but they haven’t been true to themselves.”  – Clarence Day

“Once you have had a wonderful dog, a life without one, is a life diminished.”  – Dean Koontz

“I don’t think twice about picking up my dog’s poop, but if another dog’s poop is next to it, I think, ‘Eww, dog poop!”  – Jonah Goldberg

“Dogs are how people would be if the important stuff is all that mattered to us.” – Ashly Lorenzana

“Every dog has his day, unless he loses his tail, then he has a weak-end.” – June Carter Cash

“Dogs leave pawprints on our hearts” – Author Unknown

“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

“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

“My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to $3.00 a can. That’s almost $21.00 in dog money.” – Joe Weinstein

“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” – Mark Twain

“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.” – Groucho Marx

“Scratch a dog and you’ll find a permanent job.” – Franklin Jones

“We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment to animals.” – Immanuel Kant

“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

“Does not the gratitude of the dog put to shame any man who is ungrateful to his benefactors?” – Saint Basil

“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

“A dog is the only thing that can mend a crack in your broken heart” – Judy Desmond

“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

“The old saw about old dogs and new tricks only applies to certain people.” – Daniel Pinkwater

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

“No animal I know of can consistently be more of a friend and companion than a dog.” – Stanley Leinwall

“I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.” – Rita Rudner

“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

“A dog will teach you unconditional love. If you can have that in your life, things won’t be too bad.” – Robert Wagner

“You think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us.” – Robert Louis

“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

“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 Schacter

“The dog was created specially for children. He is the god of frolic.” – Henry Ward

“Happiness is a warm puppy.”  – Charles Schulz

“My tragedy is that all I want is a dog, and yet I have been cursed with cats all my life.” – Michael Sheen

“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

“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. It is the principal difference between a dog and a man.” – Mark Twain

“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

“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

“There’s just something about dogs that makes you feel good. You come home, they’re thrilled to see you. They’re good for the ego.” – Janet Schnellman

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• 33 Simple Ways to Keep Your Dog Busy Indoors
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Looking For Some More Great Quotes About Dogs?

Looking for some more great dog quotes? Be sure to check out the following:

• Dog Quotes – BrainyQuote
• Quotes About Dogs – Good Reads
• Dog Quotes – Simply Pets
• 50 Famous Quotes About Dogs – Dog Time

What’s Your Favorite Dog Quote?

What are some of your favorite dog quotes? Let me know in the comments below. I’m partial to “Money can buy you a fine dog, but only love can make him wag his tail,” but then again if you ask me that question tomorrow I’ll probably have a another favorite. That’s what I love most about great quotes; there’s one that’s right for any mood.