| Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit,
you would stay out and your dog would go in. - Mark Twain, a Biography 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. |
|
On the 22d of June he sold his dog -- said 'Dern a dog, anyway, where you're
just starting off on a rattling bully pleasure tramp through the summer woods
and hills -- perfect nuisance -- chases the squirrels, barks at everything,
goes a-capering and splattering around in the fords -- man can't get any chance
to reflect and enjoy nature -- and I'd a blamed sight ruther carry the claim
myself, it's a mighty sight safer; a dog's mighty uncertain in a financial way
-- always noticed it-- . . .
- A Tramp Abroad
 Mark Twain and General Miles |
"Let a sleeping dog lie." It is a poor old maxim, & nothing
in it: anybody can do it, you don't have to employ a dog. - inscription written in copy of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to Margery Clinton, 18 August 1908 |
A composite dog is a dog that's made up of all the valuable qualities that's
in the dog breed -- kind of a syndicate; and a mongrel is made up of the riffraff
that's left over.
- Autobiographical dictation, 11 October 1907. Published in Autobiography
of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (University of California Press, 2015)
Lately Stormfield has distinguished itself by getting broken into by burglars.
It seems strange to me that a New York architect should have overlooked so glaring
a necessity as a burglar alarm for so isolated a house as this is, when I reflect
that New York is only an hour and a half away; that it contains four millions
of people, and that the most of them are burglars. It would not have occurred
to me to emply a dog, because a dog barks; he barks at anything and everything
that comes along, and therefore is a nuisance; of course he would bark at a
burglar, and I would rather have the burglar.
- Autobiographical dictation, 6 October 1908. Published in Autobiography
of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (University of California Press, 2015)
I do not like dogs, because they bark when there is no occasion for it; but
I have liked this one from the beginning, because he belonged to Jean, and because
he never barks except when there is occasion -- which is not oftener than twice
a week.
- "The Death of Jean"
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