This ass

There are many pretty and winning things about the human race. It is perhaps the poorest of all the inventions of all the gods, but it has never suspected it once. There is nothing prettier than its naïve and complacent appreciation of itself. It comes out frankly and proclaims, without bashfulness, or any sign of a blush, that it is the noblest work of God. It has had a billion opportunities to know better, but all signs fail with this ass. I could say harsh things about it, but I cannot bring myself to do it--it is like hitting a child.
--Mark Twain

Dictatorships

People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
--Franklin D. Roosevelt

All the time

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.
--Ursula K. Le Guin

Tenderness

One of the greatest gifts we receive from dogs is the tenderness they evoke in us.
--Dean Koontz

Becoming

In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semihuman. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.
--Edward Hoagland

Peace

Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring -- it was peace.
--Milan Kundera

Run To Greet

I heard somebody define heaven once as a place where, when you get there, all the dogs you ever loved run to greet you.
--Robert B. Parker

Common

In the end, our dogs' greatest gift to us is the saddest: they sprint ahead, pointing the way to our common fate.
--Richard Gilbert

Loss

Love and loss are inextricably entwined because we are mortal and can know love only under the condition that what we love will inevitably be lost.
--Dean Koontz

Zen

I remember throwing this toy down the stairs. I kept throwing it and throwing it, and there was as much joy on the part of the dog the last time he returned it as there had been the first time. There would have been more joy eternally. It struck me that there's something Zen about that--doing something that might seem menial, but if you have joy in it you are happy. This is a kind of wisdom that dogs have.
--Spencer Beglarian

Whole

Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.
--Roger Caras

Always and always and always

When the Man waked up he said, "What is Wild Dog doing here?" And the Woman said, "His name is not Wild Dog any more, but the First Friend, because he will be our friend for always and always and always. Take him with you when you go hunting."
--Rudyard Kipling (Just So Stories)

Seek

Dogs seek our giving hands in the same way that flowers seek the sun.
--Dana Jennings

Fate

To love is to give hostages to fate.
--Jo Coudert

JOY !!!

Most of us will never be able to live with as much joy as a dog brings to every moment of his day.
--Dean Koontz (A Big Little Life)

Want

People may or may not say what they mean...but they always say something designed to get what they want.
--David Mamet

Greed

Just why, exactly, do some people hold government in contempt? Is it perhaps because government is for all the people--E pluribus unum? Is it because the government cannot be like a private club, where only the select are included? My mind works simplistically. And so I am inclined to think dislike of government boils down to greed. More for me; less for them.
--Margaux Balfour (November 2012)

tRump

No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.
--Aristotle

Harm

Too many people here are willing to deliberately harm the country for partisan gain. That is borderline treason.
--Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN; September 2011)

Necessary

Sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness.
--Galway Kinnell

Threat

This country has nothing to fear from the crooked man who fails. We put him in jail. It is the crooked man who succeeds who is a threat to this country.
--Teddy Roosevelt (October 1905)

Fun

Growing older is not fun only if you're holding on to the way you used to be.
--Rick Brown

Push

Go ahead, push your luck, find out how much love the world can hold.
--Dar Williams

Explore

We explore because we are human, and we want to know.
--Stephen Hawking

Democracy

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
--Reinhold Niebuhr

Lucid

My biggest regret in life is that I'm neither unhappy enough to be a poet nor indifferent enough to be a philosopher but lucid enough to be a condemned man.
--David Johansen

Your Soul

What can be worse than to sell your soul and find it not valuable enough to get anything for it?
--Garry Wills

Grease Fire

It's like something this Buddhist monk told me once. He said the truth is like a grease fire and we are like dogs. We can't have it, because it's burning. We can't abandon it, because it's delicious.
--Sarah Deming