In praise of dog

I once had these lines in my blog and also posted at Sermo; I transpot them here to pay tribute to Lawrence at Facebook.

“Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.” — Mark Twain

“Near this spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity, and all the virtues of Man, without his Vices. This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery if inscribed over human ashes, is but a just tribute to the Memory of Boatswain, a Dog.” — Lord Byron in 1808.

“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

“The more I see of the representatives of the people, the more I admire my dog.” — Alphonse de Lamartine said this in 1850. This may not be entirely irrelevant in our time.

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

“If there are no dogs in heaven, then when I die, I want to go where they went.” —Will Rogers (or unknown). What he tried to say is that a place without dogs can't be Heaven.

“There are three faithful friends-an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.” — Benjamin Franklin, who also said, “God heals, and doctor takes the fee.”

“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

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

The White House pets in Lincoln's days were goats. Mary Todd Lincoln once went shopping spree at New York City and wired asking Lincoln to send check and added “Tad [their son] says are the goats well.” Lincoln responded, “Tell Tad the goats and father are very well—especially the goats.”