Dog And Death Quotes & Sayings

Rage - Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end. Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed, Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles. — Homer

And I put my hand on her arm to stop her rowing.
Aaron's Noise roars up in red and black.
The current takes us on.
"I'm sorry!" I cry as the river takes us away, my words ragged things torn from me, my chest pulled so tight I can't barely breathe. "I'm sorry, Manchee!"
"Todd?" he barks, confused and scared and watching me leave him behind. "Todd?"
"Manchee!" I scream.
Aaron brings his free hand towards my dog.
"MANCHEE!"
"Todd?"
And Aaron wrenches his arms and there's a CRACK and a scream and a cut-off yelp that tears my heart in two forever and forever.
And the pain is too much it's too much it's too much and my hands are on my head and I'm rearing back and my mouth is open in a never-ending wordless wail of all the blackness that's inside of me. — Patrick Ness

In World War II, some Japanese soldiers preferred to take their own lives rather become prisoners of war. In Saipan hundreds of civilians jumped to their deaths over cliffs in order to avoid falling into American hands. Even in life-or-death situations cultural ties and duties often outweigh the instinct for survival. This is why people die in the attempt to rescue a dog from drowning, or decide to become suicide bombers. — Harald Welzer

Picture a tall, dark figure, surrounded by cornfields ...
NO, YOU CAN'T RIDE A CAT. WHO EVER HEARD OF THE DEATH OF RATS RIDING A CAT? THE DEATH OF RATS WOULD RIDE SOME KIND OF DOG.
Picture more fields, a great horizon-spanning network of fields, rolling in gentle waves ...
DON'T ASK ME I DON'T KNOW. SOME KIND OF TERRIER, MAYBE.
... fields of corn, alive, whispering in the breeze ...
RIGHT, AND THE DEATH OF FLEAS CAN RIDE IT TOO. THAT WAY YOU KILL TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE.
... awaiting the clockwork of the seasons.
METAPHORICALLY. — Terry Pratchett

Elegy of the Death of a Mad Dog The dog, to gain some praivate ends, Went mad and bit the man. — Oliver Goldsmith

In the [first] fifteen years [of field work] I can remember just ten times when I had really narrow escapes from death. Two were from drowning in typhoons, one was when our boat was charged by a wounded whale; once my wife and I were nearly eaten by wild dogs, once we were in great danger from fanatical lama priests; two were close calls when I fell over cliffs, once I was nearly caught by a huge python, and twice I might have been killed by bandits. — Roy Chapman Andrews

The day of death is better than the day of birth, a live dog is better than a dead lion, and the grave is better than poverty. — N.J. Dawood

Most people who die in fires don't burn to death; they die from smoke inhalation that kills the respiratory system. that's why the fire service is going on and on about smoke detectors. These little ten-dollar gadgets are one of the truly wonderful inventions of man. The wake you up from a deep slumber so that you and your family and your dog or cat or whatever can get out of the house in time to live and call the fire department. If this sounds like a public service announcement, it is. If you don't have one, buy one today. They make great Christmas gifts. Plus they're cheap. Give a gift of love to a loved one you love. End of announcement. — Larry Brown

Give me your trust, said the Aes Sedai.
On my shoulders I support the sky.
Trust me to know and to do what is best,
And I will take care of the rest.
But trust is the color of a dark seed growing.
Trust is the color of a heart's blood flowing.
Trust is the color of a soul's last breath.
Trust is the color of death.
Give me your trust said the queen on her throne,
for I must bear the burden alone.
Trust me to lead and to judge and to rule, and no man will think you a fool.
But trust is the sound of the grave-dog's bark.
Trust is the sound of betrayal in the dark.
Trust is the sound of a soul's last breath.
Trust is the sound of death. — Robert Jordan

I despise and abhor the pleas on behalf of that infamous practice, vivisection ... I would rather submit to the worst of deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single dog or cat tortured to death on the pretense of sparing me a twinge or two. — Robert Browning

No matter how deep my sleep I shall hear you, and not all the power of death can keep my spirit from wagging a grateful tail. I will always love you as only a dog can. — Eugene O'Neill

Jason Oliver C. Smith, a big dumb guy who was tan, died March 30 of lung cancer and old age. He was 13 years old and lived in New Jersey, Pennsylvania. At the time of his death, his license was current and he had had all of his shots. He is survived by two adults, three children, a cat named Daisy who drove him nuts, and his lifelong companion, Pudgy, whose spaying he always regretted, as well as a host of fleas who have gone elsewhere, probably to Pudgy. He will be missed by all, except Daisy. He never bit anyone, which is more than you can say for most of us. — Anna Quindlen

Being part of an attack was a strange thing, Marcus had always thought. It was like being a component in a larger organism, something that could live or die, stand or flee, all on its own and independent of the will of the men who made it up. Sometimes it drove you onward, into the face of what seemed like certain death, in spite of every instinct screaming for flight. Other times, you could feel it falling apart, turning at bay like a whipped dog, hunkering down or turning tail to run. — Django Wexler

Together, the bells and Dog sang a song that was more than sound and power. It was the song of the earth, the moon, the stars, the sea, and the sky, of Life and Death and all that was and would be. It was the song of the Charter, the song that had bound Orannis in the long ago, the song that sought to bind the Destroyer once again. — Garth Nix

Via the conduit of a wild dog pack, she has now made the ultimate Gift to her fellow Creatures, and has become part of God's great dance of proteins. — Margaret Atwood

I am almost a hundred years old; waiting for the end, and thinking about the beginning.
There are things I need to tell you, but would you listen if I told you how quickly time passes?
I know you are unable to imagine this.
Nevertheless, I can tell you that you will awake someday to find that your life has rushed by at a speed at once impossible and cruel. The most intense moments will seem to have occurred only yesterday and nothing will have erased the pain and pleasure, the impossible intensity of love and its dog-leaping happiness, the bleak blackness of passions unrequited, or unexpressed, or unresolved. — Meg Rosoff

The Line welcomed rain and sun. Seeds germinated in mass graves, between skulls and femurs and broken pick handles, tendrils rose up alongside dog spikes and clavicles, thrust around teak sleepers and tibias, scapulas, vertebrae, fibulas and femurs. — Richard Flanagan

I suppose he'll die soon. I'm expecting it, like you do for a dog that's seventeen. There's no way to know how I'll react. He'll have faced his own placid death and slipped without a sound inside himself. Mostly, I imagine I'll crouch there at the door, fall onto him, and cry hard into the stench of his fur. I'll wait for him to wake up, but he won't. I'll bury him. I'll carry him outside, feeling his warmth turn to cold as the horizon frays and falls down in my backyard. For now, though, he's okay. I can see him breathing. He just smells like he's dead. — Markus Zusak

It was all a mistake," he pleaded, standing out of his ship, his wife slumped behind him in the deeps of the hold, like a dead woman. "I came to Mars like any honest enterprising businessman. I took some surplus material from a rocket that crashed and I built me the finest little stand you ever saw right there on that land by the crossroads - you know where it is. You've got to admit it's a good job of building." Sam laughed, staring around. "And that Martian - I know he was a friend of yours - came. His death was an accident, I assure you. All I wanted to do was have a hot-dog stand, the only one on Mars, the first and most important one. You understand how it is? I was going to serve the best darned hot dogs there, with chili and onions and orange juice." The — Ray Bradbury

At noon, you walk across a river. It is dry, with not this much water: it is just stones and pebbles. But it rains cats and dogs in the mountains, and towards afternoon, the water descends wildly and she ravages all in its path, the madwoman. That is how death comes. Without our expecting it, and we cannot do a thing against it, brothers. — Jacques Roumain

If you ever had a pet, with me it was a dog, with that sort of unconditional love that only dogs can give, people can't do that; that sort of thing where it's very powerful, it's kind of your first love and your first real relationship, and usually your first experience with death. — Tim Burton

The Americans as a nation are killing themselves with their vices and high living. As much as a man ought to eat in half an hour they swallow in three minutes gulping down their food like the [dog] under the table which when a chunk of meat is thrown down to it swallows it before you can say 'twice.' If you want a reform carry out the advice I have just given you. Dispense with your multitudinous dishes, and, depend upon it, you will do much towards preserving your families from sickness, disease and death. — Brigham Young

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good. — W. H. Auden

The truth is, it is the younger inexperience gangsters who often cut down the older original gangsters. The best way for this young thug to prove himself to others, is to simply cut down an established gangster.
Thus, this cruel cycle of senseless violence repeats itself, with the younger being more vicious and rootless than his predecessor. It's the dog, who kills the lion, and once he has killed the lion, he's no longer a dog; he's now a lion himself. — Drexel Deal

Not without a condom." He recoils like I've said something heinous that's offended his delicate little self. "Jesus, Nate, I don't have a death wish." "Nat or Natalie." "You called me BJ. I get to choose. I like Nate. I might even add a dog to the end of that. Nate-Dog. I like it." He burps and comes to the sink. He's — Erin Leigh

Achtung, motherfuckers. And good afternoon. I'm James Ellroy; the death dog with the hog log, the white knight of the far right, and the slick trick with the donkey dick. I am the author of eighteen books, masterpieces all; they precede all my future masterpieces. They are books for the whole fucking family, if the name of your family is the Manson family. — James Ellroy

Like the cat who finds her way back home over a thousand miles, like the dog who waits for his master to arrive on the train that never comes, like the one who keeps a vigil at her master's grave until she too can cross the bridge, some people and their pets are woven together by threads of life and they cannot, and will not, for long be separated. — Kate McGahan

So I say this. Speak of them. Speak of those that died. Speak of all those who ever died
in all the world's history, in its wars, and long-lost days. Speak of those who met their deaths in Glencoe, in snow
not of their deaths, but of their lives before them. Not of how they died, but of how they bent to pat a dog's head, or what ballads they could sing, or what their skin was like by their eyes when they smiled, or which weather was their weather
for it keeps them living. It stops them being dead.
To do this
to speak or write of them
puts breath back in their mouths. It lifts them up from their earthy beds ... brings them forth, and they stand by the side of the one who speaks of them; they walk out of the pages of those who write them down. From the realm, they smile upon us. All the dead people
only, they are not dead. — Susan Fletcher

Father and son had been on poor terms (even Cicero acknowledged this) and it was arranged for the young man to be accused of parricide. This was among the most serious offenses in the charge book and was one of the few crimes to attract the death penalty under Roman law. The method of execution was extremely unpleasant. An ancient legal authority described what took place: According to the custom of our ancestors it was established that the parricide should be beaten with blood-red rods, sewn in a leather sack together with a dog [an animal despised by Greeks and Romans], a cock [like the parricide devoid of all feelings of affection], a viper [whose mother was supposed to die when it was born], and an ape [a caricature of a man], and the sack thrown into the depths of the sea or a river. — Anthony Everitt

The dog leash was still tied tight around the oak tree in the back, stretched worn and limp across the green grass as if trying to escape to freedom; and he buried his wife without a tombstone. Where before, she sat most times in his home, licking her wounds. — Anthony Liccione

As I discuss in Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog?, we may, in the lifeboat or burning-house situation, decide to favor the human over the nonhuman not because death is a lesser harm to the nonhuman, but because we do not know what death means to the nonhuman and we have a better idea what it means to the human. We might, therefore, rely on this - a matter of epistemological limitation on our part and not any empirical claim that death is a lesser harm to humans - as the tie-breaker. We might also flip a coin. We might also decide to choose the nonhuman for some other reason, such as that the human in question is very old and the nonhuman in question is very young. In no case, however, would I think it appropriate to invoke any notion that humans are "higher" animals. — Gary L. Francione

Grief. The first is anticipatory. This is hospice grief. Prognostic grief. This is the grief that comes when you drive your dog to the vet for the very last time. This is the death row inmate's family's grief. See that pain in the distance? It's on its way. This is the grief that it is somewhat possible to prepare for. You finish all business. You come to terms. Goodbyes are said and said again. Anguish stalks the chambers of your heart and you steel yourself for the impending presence of an everlasting absence. This grief is an instrument of torture. It squeezes and pulls and presses down. Grief that follows an immediate loss comes on like a stab wound. This is the second kind of grief. It is a cutting pain and it is always a surprise. You never see it coming. It is a grief that can't be — Jill Alexander Essbaum

I thought it was a novel."
"It is."
"What's it about??"
"You'll have to buy it to find out, but it's got everything: love, death and an amusing dog."
"This one's got a recipe for apple crumble," I said.
"Don't you love that about the novel? The capaciousness?" he said. — Marcel Theroux

Do you really think anyone needs some kind of notarized statement saying
'Dear Saint Peter, here's another stiff, pass him through the gates, signed, Father McGonnigill.' ... 'PS: He once had a hot dog on a Friday, but don't hold that against him.' — P.N. Elrod

free." On the edge of town, Fitzgerald saw a sight "that has never left my memory. It was a picture story of the death of one 82nd Airborne trooper. He had occupied a German foxhole and made it his personal Alamo. In a half circle around the hole lay the bodies of nine German soldiers. The body closest to the hole was only three feet away, a potato masher [grenade] in its fist.II The other distorted forms lay where they had fallen, testimony to the ferocity of the fight. His ammunition bandoliers were still on his shoulders, empty of M-1 clips. Cartridge cases littered the ground. His rifle stock was broken in two. He had fought alone and, like many others that night, he had died alone. "I looked at his dog tags. The name read Martin V. Hersh. I wrote the name down in a small prayer book I carried, hoping someday I would meet someone who knew him. I never did."34 — Stephen E. Ambrose

This soldier, I realized, must have had friends at home and in his regiment; yet he lay there deserted by all except his dog. I looked on, unmoved, at battles which decided the future of nations. Tearless, I had given orders which brought death to thousands. Yet here I was stirred, profoundly stirred, stirred to tears. And by what? By the grief of one dog.
Napoleon Bonaparte, on finding a dog beside the body of his dead master, licking his face and howling, on a moonlit field after a battle. Napoleon was haunted by this scene until his own death. — Napoleon Bonaparte

little sun little moon little dog
and a little to eat and a little to love
and a little to live for

in a little room
filled with little
mice
who gnaw and dance and run while I sleep
waiting for a little death
in the middle of a little morning

in a little city
in a little state
my little mother dead
my little father dead
in a little cemetery somewhere.

I have only
a little time
to tell you this:

watch out for
little death when he comes running

but like all the billions of little deaths
it will finally mean nothing and everything:

all your little tears burning like the dove,
wasted. — Charles Bukowski

Good evening peepers, prowlers, pederasts, panty-sniffers, punks and pimps. I'm James Ellroy, the demon dog, the foul owl with the death growl, the white knight of the far right, and the slick trick with the donkey dick. I'm the author of 16 books, masterpieces all; they precede all my future masterpieces. These books will leave you reamed, steamed and drycleaned, tie-dyed, swept to the side, true-blued, tattooed and bah fongooed. These are books for the whole fuckin' family, if the name of your family is Manson. — James Ellroy

I don't want to scare the guests with a big old guard dog," Tara protested.
"Safety is far more important than worrying about what anyone else thinks," Sawyer told her.
"You're right, of course." Tara looked at her sisters. "We'll think about both an alarm and a dog."
"We can borrow Izzy from Jax," Maddie said.
"Sure," Tara said. "And she can lick the next bad guy to death. — Jill Shalvis

Some bears are sold for amazing sums at auction. An example is a very old stuffed individual named Mabel that had belonged to Elvis Presley (as a child or an adult?) and had been sold at auction several times after the King's death; it was made in the Steiff workshop in 1909. Its end was exceedingly sinister. Lent by its owner for an exhibition of stuffed bears in Wells, England, in which it was to be the star attraction, it provoked a hatred or jealousy of a young Doberman accompanying the night watchman after the first day of the exhibition. The dog seized the precious relic and furiously bit and clawed it to pieces. (252) — Michel Pastoureau

The difference between people and dogs is that dogs know how
to be dogs. I know this to be true, at least insofar as Mr. President is
an exemplary dog: Even today, with three bottles of wine left and the
air soaked with putrid death, Mr. President is a dog in full possession
of his dogness. — John Green

Our legal system, including the police, is anti-Dalit and anti-poor. The death penalty laws' wrathful majesty, in blood-shot equality, deals the fatal blow on the poor not the rich, the pariah not the brahmin, the black not the white, the underdog not the top dog, the dissenter not the conformist ... The law barks at all but bites only the poor, the powerless, the illiterate, the ignorant. — V. R. Krishna Iyer

A dog's spirit dies hard. — Mikhail Bulgakov

A boy I know named Michael, the oldest often children, came home one night intoxicated with E. When he saw the family's pet Labrador in the kitchen he strangled it to death, convinced that it was the devil. The dog bit him and there was blood all over the kitchen. The siblings who ran in to watch the aftermath of the scene were traumatized. Michael is now in drug rehab recovering from addiction. — Sean Covey

At last, I came to the Lost Dog's Home which my map told me marked teh turnoff to Shelly Beach.
You could hear some of the dogs barking, calling out for their owners to come and get them away from there ...
I hated going to those places because I always wanted to take all the dogs home or let them go free, even though I knew most of them would go straight out and be hit by a car or starve to death. I sometimes wished I could have a place where I could take those dogs and let them live. The Phantom had this sanctuary called Eden and all the animals there lived together, even tigers and baby deer, because they'd never learned it's kill or be killed. The maneaters ate fish out of the lagoon and the island was protected by the Bandar poison pygmies and by the piranha fish in the lagoon. I would have liked there to be such a place for pets who had been dumped of abandoned. They could feed the owners to the piranha. — Isobelle Carmody

Even through all of this, sometimes I wanted to lift up her chin and say, "Don't you see that is your dog?" Don't you see how we didn't want to have to love you, Laura? Don't you see how you have to love things forever anyway, no matter if it shakes, or drools, or barks in the middle of the night, or throws up food, or dies, because even in death, he is still your dog? You picked him out of a group and said, that is my dog, and the dog you picked shakes and drools and barks in the middle of the night, but you named him. And for that reason you should never want to give him up, you should always be grateful since your dog is one of the few things in life that you actually can choose as your own. — Alison Espach

Oh, I almost forgot. In case that anyone besides big-headed Near or the deluded murderer is reading these notes, then I shall at least perform the basic courtesy of introducing myself, here at the end of the prologue, I am your narrator, your navigator, your storyteller. For anyone else but those two, my identity may be of no interest to you, but I am the world's runner-up, the best dresser that died like a dog, Mihael Keehl. I once called myself Mello and was addressed by that name, but that was a long time ago.
Good memories and nightmares. — NisiOisiN

Love is love," I told her, as I tell all of my patients who are ashamed to find themselves shattered by the death of a dog. "Loss is loss. — Meg Donohue

Your brother beat him almost to death, Temujin. He held him and kicked him until he cried like a child. He is afraid of you, so he hates you. It would be wrong to hurt him again. It would be like beating a dog after it has loosed it's bladder. The spirit is already broken in him. — Conn Iggulden

Life's just a dream. It isn't real. I know that you can't see that yet. You want me to wake up but in my death I did wake up and I saw you were still sleeping. — Kate McGahan

You can kiss somebody else's spouse and get away with it. You can kiss a member of the same sex with near impunity. You can give an incestuous kiss on the sly. You can tongue-kiss a dog or exchange raptures with lab rats. But you can't kiss death without death kissing you back. Death is a passionate kisser. — Supervert

For years afterward, I had dreams in which my mother appeared in strange forms, her features sewn onto other beings in combinations that seemed both grotesque and profound: as a slippery white fish at the end of my hook, with a trout's gaping, sorrowful mouth and her dark, shuttered eyes; as the elm tree at the edge of our property, its ragged clumps of tarnished gold leaves replaced by knotted skeins of her black hair; as the lame gray dog that lived on the Mueller's property, whose mouth, her mouth, opened and closed in yearning and who never made a sound. As I grew older, I came to realize that death had been easy for my mother; to fear death, you must first have something to tether you to life. But she had not. It was as if she had been preparing for her death the entire time I knew her. One day she was alive; the next, not.
And as Sybil said, she was lucky. For what more could we presume to ask from death - but kindness? — Hanya Yanagihara

If rulers learn to undervalue the lives of their own subjects by the custom of war, how much more do they undervalue the lives of their enemies! As they learn to hear of the loss of five hundred or a thousand of their own men, with perhaps less feeling than they would hear of the death of a favorite horse or dog, so they learn to hear of the death of thousands after thousands on the side of the enemy with joy and exultation. — Noah Worcester

I heard of Bobby first early in the winter, from a Bible-reader at the Medical Mission in the Cowgate, who saw the little dog's master buried. He sees many strange, sad things in his work, but nothing ever shocked him so as the lonely death of that pious old shepherd in such a picturesque den of vice and misery." "Ay, — Eleanor Atkinson

For every first-class dog that entered the lifeboats, twenty-nine steerage women and nineteen children died. Emily Badman and Kathy Gilnagh seemed destined to be counted among the lost, having found themselves penned in behind a drawn gate, deep within the stern. An armed, junior officer stood on the other side. "Following orders," he insisted. "It's not time for you to go up. — Charles Pellegrino

You was talkin' out of yer head last night, too," chortles Davy. "No one's gonna fancy me. I'm gonna be ugly and no on'es gonna fancyme!" he mimics, mincing about the hammock. "You are such a rum cove, Jacky, for thinkin' such things when yer just about beat t' death! Fancy me? Fancy me? Jacky, no one's gonna fancy us, we're all gonna end up lookin' like Snag!"
"Which is how a salty dog sailor's supposed to look," says Willy with a firm nod.
"And you're halfway there, Jack-o!" crows Tink.
Ah, the sweet comfort of friends. — L.A. Meyer

He was a baby once, she thought. New and perfect, cradled in his mother's arms. The mysterious Sylvie. Now he was a feathery husk, ready to blow away. His eyes were half open, milky, like an old dog, and his mouth had grown beaky with the extremity of age, opening and closing, a fish out of water. Bertie could feel a continual tremor running through him, an electrical current, the faint buzz of life. Or death, perhaps. Energy was gathering around him, the air was static with it. — Kate Atkinson

Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog. — Amiri Baraka

We didn't domesticate cats. They domesticated themselves. But not totally, you know? You take a good look at any house cat, and you can tell there's eventually going to be a day when it goes back wild, you know? When it reverts to its true nature. You fall over and die in a house with your dog, and your dog will lie down beside your dead body, maybe right on top of it, and starve to death. But a house cat will feast on your eyes as soon as its stomach starts growling. — Sherman Alexie

For the pride of trace and trail was his, and sick unto death, he could not bear that another dog should do his work. — Jack London

The things that people laugh about most are their errors and inadequacies; the difficult challenges that they face such as personal identity, social and sexual relationships, and death; and incongruity, absurdity, and meaninglessness. These are all deeply human concerns and challenges: just as no one has ever seen a laughing dog, so no one has ever heard about a laughing god. — Neel Burton

It was not until after the coming of Christ that time and humans could breathe freely. It was not until after him that people began to live toward the future. Humans do not die in a ditch like a dog-but at home in history, while the work toward the conquest of death is in full swing; they die sharing in this work. — Boris Pasternak

But the Easter sacrifice in their own homes - well, think it over. I used to think the same as you, and I still hate to see the lambs and calves going home to their deaths on Good Friday. But isn't it a million times better than the way we do it at home, however 'humane' we try to be? Here, the lamb's petted, unsuspicious, happy - you see it trotting along with the children like a little dog. Till the knife's in its throat, it has no idea it's going to die. Isn't that better than those dreadful lorries at home, packed full of animals, lumbering on Mondays and Thursdays to the slaughterhouses, where, be as humane as you like, they can smell the blood and the fear, and have to wait their turn in a place just reeking of death? — Mary Stewart

In Germany, Dodd had noticed, no one ever abused a dog, and as a consequence dogs were never fearful around men and were always plump and obviously well tended. "Only horses seem to be equally happy, never children or the youth," he wrote ... He called it "horse happiness" and had noticed the same phenomenon in Nuremburg and Dresden. In part, he knew this happiness was fostered by German law, which forbade cruelty to animals and punished violators with prison.
"At a time when hundreds of men have been put to death without trial or any sort of evidence of guilt, and when the population literally trembles with fear, animals have rights guaranteed them which men and women cannot think of expecting."
He added, "One might easily wish he were a horse! — Erik Larson

Rike gave him a look as if he'd gone mad. Fat Burlow covered a chuckle. "I have spoken about that, Makin," I said. "I will break the cycle." I drew my sword and laid it across my knees. "You know how to break the cycle of hatred?" I asked. "Love," said Gomst, all quiet-like. "The way to break the cycle is to kill every single one of the bastards that fucked you over," I said. "Every last one of them. Kill them all. Kill their mothers, kill their brothers, kill their children, kill their dog." I ran my thumb along the blade of my sword and watched the blood bead crimson on the wound. "People think I hate the Count, but in truth I'm a great advocate of his methods. He has only two failings. Firstly, he goes far, but not far enough. Secondly, he isn't me. He taught me valuable lessons though. And when we meet, I will thank him for it, with a quick death. — Mark Lawrence

A comrade who deserts a comrade is a cowardly dog, and all such dogs should die a dog's death, comrade - — Robert Harris

The world was cruel and sudden. This he knew for sure. Relax for a moment, breathe in the scent of a rose, rest in the shade, pet a dog, take a sip of lemonade, fall in love with a dreamy-eyed girl or a haunted faced man, and you are just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Buzzing around the lemonade, you'll find flies. Follow the flies and you'll find death. — Kathy Hepinstall

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where St Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stock of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him crying: 'Stetson!
You, who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
You! hypocrite lecteur!-mon semblable,-mon frere! — T. S. Eliot

I remember the pain I felt, and wonder why a man who was such an accomplished liar had to tell the truth that day. — Toni Maguire

Accepting Uncle Tom's Cabin as revelation second only to the Bible, the Yankee women all wanted to know about the bloodhounds which every Southerner kept to track down runaway slaves. And they never believed her when she told them she had only seen one bloodhound in all her life and it was a small mild dog and not a huge ferocious mastiff. They wanted to know about the dreadful branding irons which planters used to mark the faces of their slaves and the cat-o'-nine-tails with which they beat them to death, and they evidenced what Scarlett felt was a very nasty and ill-bred interest in slave concubinage.
Especially did she resent this in view of the enormous increase in mulatto babies in Atlanta since the Yankee soldiers had settled in the town. — Margaret Mitchell

The love of a dog for his master is notorious; in the agony of death he has been known to caress his master, and everyone has heard of the dog suffering under vivisection, who licked the hand of the operator; this man, unless he had a heart of stone, must have felt remorse to the last hour of his life. — Charles Darwin

Neighbours complaining about someone's dog making an awful racket. You could hardly blame the poor beast, its owner had died in her bed at least a fortnight before and there hadn't been much left of the old girl worth eating. — James Oswald

In Mongolia, when a dog dies, he is buried high in the hills so people cannot walk on his grave. The dog's master whispers in the dog's ear his wishes that the dog will return as a man in his next life. Then his tail is cut off and put beneath his head, and a piece of meat of fat is cut off and placed in his mouth to sustain his soul for its journey; before he is reincarnated, the dog's soul is freed to travel the land, to run across the high desert plains for as long as it would like.
I learned that from a program on the National Geographic Channel, so I believe it is true. Not all dogs return as men, they say; only those who are ready.
I am ready. — Garth Stein

I don't believe in happy endings. Children have got to face death sooner or later. Granny and Grandpa die, dogs die, cats die, gerbils and those frightful things - what are they called? - hamsters: all die like flies. So there's no point avoiding it. — Raymond Briggs

The glee of it. The ecstasy of It. I can't speak about this It because I know no word. It is just there, It is always there, like death in life. In this instant I know that something terrible is rising that must be seized and turned back upon itself before it twists outward into violence. But that knowing always comes too late, a wild unraveling is under way and I am caught up in it like a coyote seen late one afternoon in an Arkansas tornado-a toy dog spinning skyward, struck white by a ray of sun against black clouds, then black, then white, then gone and lost forever. The wind dies. A dead stillness. Mirror water. That ecstasy that shivered every nerve replaced by the precise knowing that what this self perpetrated is as much a part of the universal will as erupting lava that subsides once more into the inner earth. — Peter Matthiessen

We who advocate peace are becoming an irrelevance when we speak peace. The government speaks rubber bullets, live bullets, tear gas, police dogs, detention, and death. — Desmond Tutu

Feed a stray dog when you get lonesome for me. Check on some of the older ladies in town that have no help when you get lonesome for me. Or better yet, go to church. I bet you haven't been twice since the funeral. I'm not in the casket, Carrigan, and I'm not at the cemetery..I never was. No, go live, and stop obsessing on this. — Celeste Fletcher McHale

Youth, then, once ballyhooed as the epicenter of fun, hot dogs, hot sex, and marvelous dope-smoking good times, is now defined as follows: that period before death, characterized by smooth skin and ill-formed ideas. — Marilyn Suzanne Miller

Tis torture, and not mercy. Heaven is here Where Juliet lives, and every cat and dog And little mouse, every unworthy thing, Live here in heaven and may look on her, But Romeo may not. — William Shakespeare

After Death nothing is, and nothing, death,
The utmost limit of a gasp of breath.
Let the ambitious zealot lay aside
His hopes of heaven, whose faith is but his pride;
Let slavish souls lay by their fear
Nor be concerned which way nor where
After this life they shall be hurled.
Dead, we become the lumber of the world,
And to that mass of matter shall be swept
Where things destroyed with things unborn are kept.
Devouring time swallows us whole.
Impartial death confounds body and soul.
For Hell and the foul fiend that rules
God's everlasting fiery jails
(Devised by rogues, dreaded by fools),
With his grim, grisly dog that keeps the door,
Are senseless stories, idle tales,
Dreams, whimseys, and no more. — John Wilmot

People who raise dogs to fight should be shot. Men who steal a little girl's dog to bait a fighting dog should die the slowest, most torturous death possible. Their skin should be separated from their flesh with an air hose through minute slits and then have water from the Salton Sea injected slowly into the cavities while someone rips off strips of duct tape from their balls. But that's just off the top of my head. — Rhys Ford

Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog And in that town a dog was found, As many dogs there be, Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound, And curs of low degree. — Oliver Goldsmith

Following Emporer Nero's command, "Let the Christians be exterminated!:" ... they [the Christians] were made the subjects of sport; they were covered with the hides of wild beasts and worried to death by dogs, or nailed to crosses or set fire to, and when the day waned, burned to serve for the evening lights. — Tacitus

Ah, yes, the departmental shrink. And in the silence that followed, he knew everyone was waiting for him to groan, but he wasn't a Lethal Weapon wild card, damn it.
Yeah. For example, he couldn't dislocate his shoulder, he didn't live on the beach with a dog, and he wasn't rocking a death wish. You're welcome. — J.R. Ward

As he walked out into the North Carolina sunshine, Lola's hand in his, a smile curved one corner of his lips.
Not so long ago, he'd stood on the burned-out bridge of the Dora Mae, thinking himself cursed with a beautiful underwear model and her sissy little dog. He'd always believed Lola Carlyle would be the death of him.
"We never did get around to watching Pride and Prejudice," she said, a teasing glint in her beautiful eyes.
Yeah, she would most definitely be the death of him, but what a way to go. — Rachel Gibson

I know well enough that there have been dogs so loving that they have thrown themselves into the same grave with the dead bodies of their masters; others have stayed upon their masters' graves without stirring a moment from them, and have voluntarily starved themselves to death, refusing to touch the food that was brought them. — Miguel De Cervantes

The General knew he would probably die, for infantry took pleasure in killing cavalry and he would be the leading horseman in the attack on the bridge, but the General was a soldier and he had long learned that a soldier's real enemy is the fear of death. Beat that fear and victory was certain, and victory brought glory and fame and medals and money and, best of all, sweetest of all, most glorious and wondrous of all, the modest teasing grin of a short black-haired Emperor who would pat the Dragoon General as though he was a faithful dog, and the thought of that Imperial favour made the General quicken his horse and raise his battered sword. — Bernard Cornwell

Men can imagine their own deaths, they can see them coming, and the mere though of impending death acts like an aphrodisiac. A dog or rabbit doesn't behave like that. Take birds
in a lean season they cut down on the eggs, or they won't mate at all. They put their energy into staying alive themselves until times get better. But human beings hope they can stick their souls into someone else, some new version of themselves, and live on forever.
As a species were doomed by hope, then?
You could call it hope. That, or desperation.
But we're doomed without hope, as well, said Jimmy.
Only as individuals, said Crake cheerfully. — Margaret Atwood

There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and woman to fill our day;
But when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers & Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear. — Rudyard Kipling

That not-knowing might seem awful but it's not that bad because she knew lots of things in the way nobody teaches a dog to wag his tail or a person to feel hungry; you're born and you just know. Just as nobody one day would teach her how to die: yet she'd surely die one day as if she'd learned the starring role by heart. For at the hour of death a person becomes a shining movie star, it's everyone's moment of glory and it's when as in choral chanting you hear the whooshing shrieks. — Clarice Lispector

Every Clayr is given the gift to See some portent of her death, though not the death itself, for no human could bear that weight. Almost twenty years ago I Saw myself and your little dog, and in time I realized that this was the vision that foretold my final days. — Garth Nix

He's weak, afraid and dumber than your dog.
Besides, you gonna bet the farm on a pig?

The Alien Club — Trel Sidoruk

My father sits at the head of a table before the carcass of an enormous American turkey. What he is ashamed of is the one act of decency I have yet encountered in all the tales of our family's past. A young boy with a dead father and a dead friend bends down before a country dog and feeds it his butter sandwich. And I know that sandwich. Because he has made it for me. Two slices of that dark, unbleached Russian bread, the kind that tastes of badly managed soil and a peasant's indifference to death. On top of it, the creamiest, deadliest of American butter, slathered in thick feta-like hunks. And on top of that cloves of garlic, the garlic that is to give me strength, that is to clear my lungs of asthmatic gunk, and make of me a real garlic-eating strong man. At a table in Leningrad, and a table in deepest Queens, New York, the ridiculous garlic crunches beneath our teeth as we sit across from each other, the garlic obliterating whatever else we have eaten, and making us one. — Gary Shteyngart

You'd help if you could, wouldn't you, boy?" I said. "It's no wonder they call you man's best friend. Faithful and loyal and true, you share in our sorrows and rejoice with us in our triumphs, the truest friend we ever have known, a better friend than we deserve. You have thrown in your lot with us, through thick and thin, on battlefield and hearthrug, refusing to leave your master even when death and destruction lie all around. Ah, noble dog, you are the furry mirror in which we see our better selves reflected, man as he could be, unstained by war or ambition, unspoilt by- — Connie Willis

One last word of farewell, dear master and mistress. Whenever you visit my grave, say to yourselves with regret but also happiness in your hearts at the remembrance of my long happy life with you: "Here lies one who loves us and whom we loved." No matter how deep my sleep I shall hear you, and not all the power of death can keep my spirit from wagging a grateful tail. — Eugene O'Neill

QUEEN MARGARET:
From forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept
A hell-hound that doth hunt us all to death:
That dog, that had his teeth before his eyes
To worry lambs and lap their gentle blood,
That foul defacer of God's handiwork,
That excellent grand tyrant of the earth
That reigns in galled eyes of weeping souls,
Thy womb let loose to chase us to our graves. — William Shakespeare

What do you think of when you think of mourning?' Jenny asks.
The question snaps me back to attention. I answer without really thinking. "I guess 'Funeral Blues' by W.H. Auden. I think it was Auden. I suppose that's not very original.'
'I don't know it.'
'It's a poem.'
'I gathered.'
'I'm just clarifying. It's not a blues album.'
Jenny ignores my swipe at her intelligence.
'Does your response need to be original? Isn't that what poetry is for, for the poet to express something so personal that it ultimately is universal?'
I shrug. Who is Jenny, even new Jenny, to say what poetry is for? Who am I for that matter?
'Why do you thin of that poem in particular?'
"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, / Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, / Silence the pianos and with muffled drum / Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.'
I learned the poem in college and it stuck. — Steven Rowley

I could croak with no warning, and the only tragedy anyone would experience would be showing up on the last day of my estate sale simply to discover that all remaining items had copious amounts of dog hair on them. — Laurie Notaro

We do this thing. We open our hearts to the world around us. And the more we do that, the more we allow ourselves to love, the more we are bound to find ourselves one day - like Dave, and Morley, and Sam, and Stephanie - standing in the kitchen of our live, surrounded by the ones we love, and feeling empty, and alone, and sad, and lost for words, because one of our loved ones, who should be there, is missing. Mother or father, brother or sister, wife or husband, or a dog or cat. It doesn't really matter. After a while, each death feels like all the deaths, and you stand there like eveyone else has stood there before you, while the big wind of sadness blows around and through you.
"He was a great dog," said Dave.
"Yes," said Morley. "He was a great dog. — Stuart McLean

If all I can say is I'm not in this swamp, I'm not in this swamp then there is not a rope in front of me and there is not an alligator behind me and there is not a girl sitting at the edge eating a hot dog and if I believe that, then dying would be the only answer because then Death couldn't come and say Peachy to me anymore and after all she has a brother who believes in hope. — Tori Amos