Mark Twain, American writer, “The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, not man’s”
The humorist and satirist was a fountain of quotable sayings and quite a few of them were about man’s best friend whom he held in higher esteem than humans.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, is considered one of the best American writers. He is perhaps the most quoted one thanks to his sharp wit and aphorisms.
One topic the humorist and satirist came back to time and again was comparing dogs and humans. He consistently held the former in higher esteem than the latter. “The more I know about people, the better I like my dogs,” he is quoted as saying.
Twain had a fondness for dog’s character
Dogs have earned a special place in the hearts of humans, even being dubbed ‘man’s best friend’. This is thanks to the companionship they give and their loyalty. Twain noted that humans could lack in the latter quality.
“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 man,” the wordsmith said in Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.
In a letter to fellow writer William D. Howells in 1899, Twain wrote “The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, not man’s.” Twain also noted that getting into human heaven wasn’t based on how you lived your life. “Heaven goes by favor; if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in,” he wrote.
But he wasn’t completely oblivious of some of dogs’ failings, pondering: “By what right has the dog come to be regarded as a “noble” animal? The more brutal and cruel and unjust you are to him the more your fawning and adoring slave he becomes; whereas, if you shamefully misuse a cat once she will always maintain a dignified reserve toward you afterward—you will never get her full confidence again.”
That said, even dogs can have limits he noted and you’d be wise to pay attention. “When a man’s dog turns against him it is time for a wife to pack her trunk and go home to mama,” Twain observed.
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