40 Beautiful Quotes About Dogs And Humans

Written by Ella White

UpdatedDec 16, 2022

The bond between dogs and humans is as old as time… So it’s no surprise that, through the millennia, many have remarked on the irreplaceable and incomparable relationship between themselves and their hounds.

From authors to saints to presidents, these are some of our favorite quotes about humans and dogs, which remind us just how much we love our four-legged furry friends – and why.

“A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing.” - Mary Oliver, Dog Songs
“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
“Somehow this creature has completed my manhood; somehow, I cannot explain why, a man ought to have a dog. A man ought to have six legs; those other four legs are part of him. Our alliance is older than any of the passing and priggish explanations that are offered of either of us; before evolution was, we were. You can find it written in a book that I am a mere survival of a squabble of anthropoid apes; and perhaps I am. I am sure I have no objection. But my dog knows I am a man, and you will not find the meaning of that word written in any book as clearly as it is written in his soul.” - G.K. Chesterton
“A dog is the only thing that can mend a crack in your broken heart.” - Judy Desmond
"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 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
"A dog will teach you unconditional love. If you can have that in your life, things won't be too bad." - Robert Wagner
"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 average dog is a nicer person than the average person.” - Andy Rooney
“Dogs are good humans, humans are bad dogs.” - Fakeer Ishavardas

“There is nothing truer in this world than the love of a good dog.” - Mira Grant
"Like many other much-loved humans, they believed that they owned their dogs, instead of realizing that their dogs owned them." - Dodie Smith, 101 Dalmatians
“Be the person your dog thinks you are.” - C.J. Frick
“And it certainly seemed ethically questionable, the relationship between humans and dogs, both of whom—on the scale of intelligence that covered every species in the universe—would have been somewhere in the middle, not too far apart.” - Matt Haig, The Humans
“If I could be half the person my dog is, I'd be twice the human I am.” - Charles Yu
"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
“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
"Dogs don't rationalize. They don't hold anything against a person. They don't see the outside of a human but the inside of a human." - Cesar Millan
"Dogs are how people would be if the important stuff is all that mattered to us." - Ashly Lorenzana
“Once you have had a wonderful dog, a life without one is a life diminished.” - Dean Koontz
"Everyone thinks they have the best dog. And none of them are wrong." - W.R. Purche
“The bond with a true dog is as lasting as the ties of this earth will ever be.” - Konrad Lorenz
"Actually, my dog I think is the only person who consistently loves me all the time." - H. G. Bissinger
"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
"I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it." - Abraham Lincoln
“It is amazing how much love and laughter [dogs] bring into our lives and even how much closer we become with each other because of them.” - John Grogan
"A dog is a bond between strangers." - John Steinbeck
“A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.” - Josh Billings
"Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate." - Sigmund Freud
“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
“What's one thing that we have in our lives that we can depend on? A dog or a cat loving us unconditionally, every day, very faithfully." - Jon Katz
"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, Peanuts
“The world would be a nicer place if everyone had the ability to love as unconditionally as a dog.” - M.K. Clinton
"You can usually tell that a man is good if he has a dog who loves him." - W. Bruce Cameron
“Does not the gratitude of the dog put to shame any man who is ungrateful to his benefactors?” - Saint Basil
"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
"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
“Having a dog will bless you with many of the happiest days of your life, and one of the worst.” - Unknown
"My little dog—a heartbeat at my feet." - Edith Wharton
"My fashion philosophy is, if you're not covered in dog hair, your life is empty." - Elayne Boosler