Posts Tagged ‘Pet Quotes’

“A person can learn a lot from a dog, even a loopy one like ours. Marley taught me about living each day with unbridled exuberance and joy, about seizing the moment and following your heart. He taught me to appreciate the simple things-a walk in the woods, a fresh snowfall, and a nap in a shaft of winter sunlight. And as he grew old and achy, he taught me about optimism in the face of adversity. Mostly, he taught me about friendship and selflessness and, above all else, unwavering loyalty.”

― John Grogan, Marley & Me: Love and Life with the World’s Worst Dog

“Animal lovers are a special breed of humans, generous of spirit, full of empathy, perhaps a little prone to sentimentality and with hearts as big as a cloudless sky”

― John Grogan, Marley & Me Illustrated Edition: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog

“A dog has no use for fancy cars or big homes or designer clothes. Status symbol means nothing to him. A waterlogged stick will do just fine. A dog judges others not by their color or creed or class but by who they are inside. A dog doesn’t care if you are rich or poor, educated or illiterate, clever or dull. Give him your heart and he will give you his. It was really quite simple, and yet we humans, so much wiser and more sophisticated, have always had trouble figuring out what really counts and what does not. As I wrote that farewell column to Marley, I realized it was all right there in front of us, if only we opened our eyes. Sometimes it took a dog with bad breath, worse manners, and pure intentions to help us see.”

― John Grogan

“. . . owning a dog always ended with this sadness because dogs just don’t live as long as people do.”

― John Grogan, Marley & Me: Love and Life with the World’s Worst Dog

“It’s just the most amazing thing to love a dog, isn’t it? It makes our relationships with people seem as boring as a bowl of oatmeal.”

― John Grogan, Marley & Me: Love and Life with the World’s Worst Dog

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

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, Marley & Me: Love and Life with the World’s Worst Dog

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

― John Grogan, Marley & Me: Love and Life with the World’s Worst Dog

“Then I dropped my forehead against his and sat there for a long time, as if I could telegraph a message through our two skulls, from my brain to his. I wanted to make him understand some things.

You know all that stuff we’ve always said about you?” I whispered. “What a total pain you are? Don’t believe it. Don’t believe it for a minute, Marley.” He needed to know that, and something more, too. There was something I had never told him, that no one ever had. I wanted him to hear it before he went.

Marley,” I said. “You are a great dog.”

― John Grogan, Marley & Me: Love and Life with the World’s Worst Dog

“There’s no such thing as a bad dog, just a bad owner.”

― John Grogan, Marley & Me: Love and Life with the World’s Worst Dog

“I had never thought of Marley as any kind of model, but sitting there sipping my beer, I was aware that maybe he held the secret for a good life. Never slow down, never look back, live each day w/ adolescent verve and spunk and curiosity and playfulness.”

― John Grogan, Marley & Me Illustrated Edition: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog

“In the English language, it all comes down to this: Twenty-six letters, when combined correctly, can create magic. Twenty -six letters form the foundation of a free, informed society.”

― John Grogan, Bad Dogs Have More Fun: Selected Writings on Family, Animals, and Life from the Philadelphia Inquirer

“In a dog’s life, some plaster would fall, some cushions would open, some rugs would shred. Like any relationship, this one had its costs. They were costs we came to accept and balance against the joy and amusement and protection and companionship he gave us.”

― John Grogan, Marley & Me: Love and Life with the World’s Worst Dog

“Only then did I see. Something was amiss with Patrick’s Snap-On one piece, or “onesie” as we manly dads like to call it. His chubby thighs, I now realized, were squeezed into the armholes, which were so tight they must have been cutting off his circulation. The collared neck hung between his legs like an udder. Up top, Patrick’s head stuck out through the unsnapped crotch, and his arms were lost somewhere in the billowing pant legs. It was quite a look.”

― John Grogan, Marley & Me Illustrated Edition: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog

“If you still think you’re a young pup then you are, no matter what the calendar says”

― John Grogan, Marley & Me: Love and Life with the World’s Worst Dog

“In a world of bosses, you are your own master”

― John Grogan, Marley & Me

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

― John Grogan, Marley & Me: Love and Life with the World’s Worst Dog

“He taught us the art of unqualified love. How to give it, how to accept it. Where there is that, most other pieces fall into place.”

― John Grogan, Marley & Me: Love and Life with the World’s Worst Dog

“Just so you know Labrador retrievers do not howl. Begals Howl. Wolves howl. Labs do not howl, at least not well. Marley attempted twice to howl, both times in answer to a passing police siren, tossing back his head, forming his mouth into an O shape, and letting loose the most pathetic sound I have ever heard, more like gargling than answering the call of the wild. But now, no question about it he was howling.”

― John Grogan, Marley: A Dog like No Other

“A dog doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor, educated or illiterate, clever or dull. Give him your heart and he will give you his.”

― John Grogan, Marley & Me: Love and Life with the World’s Worst Dog

“(Referring to their hens/chickens)

We now had three girls and one testosterone-pumped guy bird that spent every walking minute doing of three things: pursuing sex, having sex or crowing boastfully about the sex he had just scored. Jenny observed that roosters are what men would be if left to their own devices, with no social conventions to rein in their baser instincts, and I couldn’t disagree. I had to admit, I kind of admired the lucky bastard.”

― John Grogan, Marley & Me: Love and Life with the World’s Worst Dog

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It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds.

- Aesop

One swallow does not make a summer.

- Aristotle

How helpless we are, like netted birds, when we are caught by desire!

- Belva Plain

I realized that if I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.

- Charles Lindbergh

A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.

-  Chinese Proverb

Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees.

- David Letterman

I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.

- Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)

The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.

Eric Berne (1910 – 1970)

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.

Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)

Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.

Henry Van Dyke

Those little nimble musicians of the air, that warble forth their curious ditties, with which nature hath furnished them to the shame of art.

Izaak Walton (1593 – 1683)

God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.

Jacques Deval, Afin de vivre bel et bien

The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense his life. . . . The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds — how many human aspirations are realised in their free, holiday-lives — and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!

John Burroughs (1837 – 1921), Birds and Poets, 1887

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.

Joseph Addison (1672 – 1719), ‘The Spectator’

I know why the caged bird sings.

Maya Angelou (1928 – ), Quoting a lyric by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Cranes carry this heavy mystical baggage. They’re icons of fidelity and happiness. The Vietnamese believe cranes cart our souls up to heaven on our wings.

Mitchell Burgess, Northern Exposure, The Bad Seed, 1992

Our avian brothers are back to roost on the first leg of their annual sojourn south. Why them and not us? Maybe it’s because we humans are meant to be rooted in one spot.

Mitchell Burgess, Northern Exposure, The Bad Seed, 1992

There’ll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover,

Tomorrow, just you wait and see.

Nat Burton, White Cliffs of Dover (song, 1941)

There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.

Robert Lynd (1879 – 1949), The Blue Lion and Other Essays

Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn’t people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?

Rose Kennedy (1890 – 1995)

Much talking is the cause of danger. Silence is the means of avoiding misfortune. The talkative parrot is shut up in a cage. Other birds, without speech, fly freely about.

Saskya Pandita

I know of only one bird – the parrot – that talks; and it can’t fly very high.

Wilbur Wright (1867 – 1912), declining to make a speech in 1908

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.

William Blake (1757 – 1827)

When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of genius; lift up thy head!

William Blake (1757 – 1827)

You cannot fly like an eagle with the wings of a wren.

William Henry Hudson (1841 – 1922), Afoot in England, 1909

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