Talk:Dogs

Latest comment: 5 months ago by Ficaia in topic Surplus

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Surplus

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  • "Most people believe that when a dog howls near a house it forebodes death, for it is said a dog can distinguish the awful form of Azra'il, the Angel of Death."
    • Richard Burton, Arabia, Vol 1, p. 290. in : Hughes, T. P. (1986). Dictionary of Islam: : being a cyclopaedia of the doctrines, rites, ceremonies, and customs together with the technical and theological terms, of the Muhammadan religion.
  • In Sharifabad the dogs distinguished clearly between Moslem and Zoroastrian, and were prepared to go, with a diffident politeness but full of hope, into a crowded Zoroastrian assembly, or to fall asleep trustfully in a Zoroastrian lane, but would flee as before Satan from a group of Moslem boys. Moslems are not, of course, invariably unkind to dogs. Some themselves own herd- or watch-dogs, and apart from this there are naturally many Moslems who would not deliberately harm any creature. But undeniably there are others who are savagely and wantonly cruel to dogs, on the pretext that Muhammad called them unclean; but there seems no factual basis for this, and the evidence points rather to Moslem hostility to these animals having been deliberately fostered in the first place in Iran, as a point of opposition to the old faith there. Certainly in the Yazdi area na-najib Moslems found a double satisfaction in tormenting dogs, since they were thereby both afflicting an unclean creature and causing distress to the infidel who cherished him. There are grim old stories from the time when the annual poll-tax was exacted, of the tax gatherer tying a Zoroastrian and a dog together, and flogging both alternately until the money was somehow forthcoming, or death released them. I myself was spared any worse sight than that of a young Moslem girl in Mazra' Kalantar standing over a litter of two-week old puppies, and suddenly kicking one as hard as she could with her shod foot. The puppy screamed with pain, but at my angry intervention she merely said blankly, ‘But it’s unclean.’ In Sharifabad I was told by distressed Zoroastrian children of worse things: a litter of puppies cut to pieces with a spade-edge, and a dog’s head laid open with the same implement; and occasionally the air was made hideous with the cries of some tormented animal. Such wanton cruelties on the Moslems’ part added not a little to the tension between the communities.
    • Mary Boyce (1977). A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism. Oxford University Press. p. 141. 
  • “Once Gabriel promised the Prophet (that he would visit him, but Gabriel did not come) and later on he said, ‘We, angels, do not enter a house which contains a picture or a dog.’”
  • [W]e want to believe that our dogs love us, and that makes us look for things that might not be there. It’s not important for dogs to love; it is important for dogs to belong. Dogs are always described as giving unconditional love, but that makes them sound like idiots and best and utter moral simpletons at worst. Yes, O Adolf Hitler, you are the greatest and I love you completely. Is it sad dogs don’t love as we wish them to? No: It’s sad that we don’t understand how belonging satisfies them so completely that the baroque complexities of love seem utterly unnecessary. Humans spend a lifetime defining and redefining love, building up edifices that can be demolished with a selfish sin; humans hover over love like a flower bed, weeding and pruning, worrying about frost and drought, mistaking the brilliance of the petals for the depth of the root.
    Who wants this from a dog?
    From a dog you get stolid clear-eyed constancy: we belong together and that’s how it is. There’s no mental vocabulary for the alternative. A dog’s heart never dreams of a different master.
  • Individuals are welcome to like or dislike dogs as they choose, but there’s something odd about a culture that despises dogs. [...] You can almost look at the position of dogs in a culture as a barometer of social health - on one end, hatred of dogs; in the middle, tolerance and consumption of dogs, and on the other end love of dogs so intense there are surgeons who specialize in reconstructing their hips so they may chase squirrels three years into their second decade.

Protection of the pages

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I think that a administrator must protect this page, I have seen that this page is vandalized, but want that review this page, and decide in protect. Only a request. --Danilo Andres Ramirez   Problems? 00:06, 17 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for undoing the vandalism. Protection is only needed when there is persistent vandalism or edit warring, which does not appear to be the case here. ~ Ningauble 16:35, 17 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

Unsourced

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Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable and precise source for any quote on this list please move it to Dogs.

  • A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down.
  • A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.
  • A dog owns nothing, yet is seldom dissatisfied.
    • Irish Proverb
  • A door is that which a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
  • A puppy is but a dog, plus high spirits, and minus common sense.
  • Animals are such agreeable friends — they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
  • Better not take a dog on the space shuttle, because if he sticks his head out when you're coming home his face might burn up.
  • Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think that's how dogs spend their lives.
  • Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.
  • Dogs have more love than integrity. They've been true to us, yes, but they haven't been true to themselves.
  • Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.
  • Even the smallest dog can lift its leg on the tallest building.
  • Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.
  • I hope if dogs ever take over the world, and they chose a king, they don't just go by size, because I bet there are some Chihuahuas with some good ideas.
  • I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.
  • I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.
  • If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.
  • If dogs could talk, perhaps we'd find it just as hard to get along with them as we do people.
  • If it be the chief point of friendship to comply with a friend's motions and inclinations, he possesses this in an eminent degree; he lies down when I sit, and walks when I walk, which is more than many good friends can pretend to do.
  • If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater, suggest that he wear a tail.
  • If you live among dogs, keep a stick. After all, this is what a hound has teeth for — to bite when he feels like it!
  • If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
  • In the future, airplanes will be flown by a dog and a pilot. And the dog's job will be to make sure that if the pilot tries to touch any of the buttons, the dog bites him.
  • Money will buy a pretty good dog, but it won't buy the wag of his tail.
  • My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to 99 cents a can. That's almost $7.00 in dog money.
  • Old age means realizing you will never own all the dogs you wanted to.
  • Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
  • 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.
  • The reason dogs have so many friends is because they wag their tails instead of their tongues.
    • Unknown
  • 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.
  • What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight, what counts is the size of the fight in the dog.
  • When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.
  • Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
  • I created dog, to mend the error I made in creating man.
  • 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.
  • "If you think dogs can't count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket then giving Fido only two of them."
  • I poured spot remover on my dog. Now he's gone.
  • A dog may chase a cat, but will the cat chase the dog?
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