A man’s (and a girl’s) best friends...

THE ORIGIN OF “MAN’S BEST FRIEND”: “The best friend a man has...is his dog.”        George Graham Vest (1830-1904)        American lawyer and politician        These words are from Vest’s summation in the trial of a sheep farmer who shot and killed his neighbor’s dog, Old Drum. The trial was held at the Johnson County Courthouse in Warrensburg, Missouri on September 23, 1870. Vest’s client, the broken-hearted owner of Old Drum, had sued the farmer for compensation. Vest brought the jury to tears when he said:        “The best friend a man has in this world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter that he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name, may become traitors to their faith…The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when success is with us may be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud upon our heads. The one absolutely unselfish friend that a man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him and the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous is his dog.”        The first six words of that paragraph, combined with the last three — “The best friend a man has...is his dog” — is traditionally credited as the origin of the dog-lovers’ saying we know today: “A dog is a man’s best friend.” (Sometimes given as “A man’s best friend is his dog.”)  You can read more about the Old Drum case in this post on my This Day In Quotes site.

THE MARX-FLAVORED VARIATION: “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”       Groucho Marx (1890-1977)        Legendary American comedian        This quip has been credited to Groucho since the 1970s. However, as noted in a post on the great Quote Investigator site, it doesn’t appear in his movies or written works and a similar joke was published in the February 1954 issue of Boys’ Life magazine, so he probably didn’t coin it.

THE INTENTIONALLY CREEPY VERSION: “A boy’s best friend is his mother.”        Actor Anthony Perkins, as the character Norman Bates, in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film Psycho (1960)

THE UNINTENTIONALLY CREEPY VERSION: “Whoever said, ‘A dog is man’s best friend’ must have been a single fellow. As helpful and useful as all of God's creation would be to man, none of these animals were socially, intellectually, or sexually compatible to man.”        From “At The Beginning: A Study of Marriage”         An article posted on the Christian “electronic magazine” called “The Expository Files.” (Which are not related to The X Files…Or are they?)

THE GIRLS CLICHÉ IMMORTALIZED BY MARILYN: “A kiss on the hand may be quite continental, But diamonds are a girl’s best friend.”        From the song “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend,” written by songwriters Jule Styne and Leo Robin        This great song comes from the 1949 Broadway musical Gentleman Prefer Blondes, which was adapted from the 1925 book Gentleman Prefer Blondes, written by Anita Loos. It was introduced by Carol Channing in the original Broadway production. But for many people, the most remembered and iconic version was performed by Marilyn Monroe in the 1953 film version of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

THE COUNTERQUOTE TO THE GIRLS  CLICHÉ: “Whoever said diamonds are a girl’s best friend never had a dog.”        A dog-lovers’ quote of anonymous origin that has reached meme level status in the Internet.        (The girls in the photo are my wife BJ and our dog Barbie Boo.)

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Related reading and viewing…

From Kipling to the Coen Brothers: Twains That Never Meet (and some that do)...

THE FAMOUS ORIGINAL QUOTE: “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.”        Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)        British poet, short story writer and novelist         This is the opening line of Kipling’s poem “The Ballad of East and West,” which was first published in 1889 and is one of Kipling’s popular Barrack-Room Ballads poems. The famous first line made the old English word twain, which means “two,” familiar to most people. It also evolved into a proverbial saying and variable word formula used to suggest that two different types of people or things cannot co-exist or find common ground. Ironically, the actual point of Kipling’s poem is that two intelligent and honorable people from different cultures can understand and respect one another. In the poem, that’s the lesson learned by two men from vastly different backgrounds — a wild Scottish Chieftain named Kamal and the privileged son of a British Colonel. The moral of the story is embodied in the first four lines, which are also repeated at the end of the poem:        “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,        Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;        But there is neither East nor West, border, nor breed, nor birth,        When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!”

GROUCHO’S VERSION: “We must remember that art is art. Still, on the other hand, water is water, isn’t it? And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like apple sauce, they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.”         Captain Spaulding (played by Groucho Marx)         Effectively confusing art connoisseur Roscoe W. Chandler (actor Louis Sorin) in the classic Marx Brothers movie Animal Crackers (1930)

THE STOOGES VERSION: Moe: “Spread out and remember, ducks is ducks and cash is king.” Curly: “And never the twain shall meet.”        In the Three Stooges film A Ducking They Did Go (1939)

THE WOMAN WARRIOR PRINCIPLE: “Feminine is feminine, masculine is masculine, and ne’er the twain shall meet. The woman warrior triumphs not by being a successful woman in a male world (the exception which proves the rule or the token which solidifies convention), nor by transcending gender difference in androgynous equality, but by passing as a man, denying her biological sex altogether...Passing as a male, the woman warrior would refuse her body the power to determine her identity.”        Michael O’Donovan-Anderson        Assistant professor of philosophy at Stonehill College        In his book The Incorporated Self: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Embodiment (1996)

A CHRISTIAN BIOLOGIST’S THOUGHTS ON EVOLUTION: “As Christians we don’t have to simply stand aside and say, Well, science is about the material and religion about the spiritual, and ne’er the twain shall meet. Instead, we can rejoice as Christians in the ethical meaning behind what evolutionary biologists are increasingly finding.”        Joan Roughgarden        Professor of geophysics and biological sciences at Stanford University        In her book Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist (2006)

HUEY’S THOUGHTS ON THE EVOLVING MUSIC MARKET: “Today, society is integrated, but music is segregated. You have country here, R&B here and never the twain shall meet.”        Rock musician Huey Lewis          Commenting on the challenge of today’s segmented music market, in an interview posted on the American Songwriter site, February 9, 2011

THE GENESEE BEER BOAST: “In the old days, there were ales and there were lagers. Ales were flavorful. Lagers were smooth. And never the twain did meet. Until Genesee Cream Ale. And then the twain met head on to form an American Original with the flavor of an ale and the smoothness of a lager.”        Promotional blurb on the Genesee Cream Ale website

THE TATTOO QUOTES QUOTE: “Once upon a time, there were people who enjoyed quoting from classic literary texts, and people who enjoyed getting tattoos, and rarely the twain did meet. But tattoos have gone mainstream, and the result is a paradox of the digital age: Nowadays, nothing demonstrates a commitment to literature better than words inked on skin.”        Journalist Mark Lewis         In a post about “literary tattoos” on the Forbes.com website, August 13, 2009

COWDOG WISDOM: “Cowdogs and coyotes don’t mix. We’re natural enemies, born on different sides of the law, and as the old saying goes, “Never the twangs shall meet.” Exactly what a ‘twang’ is, I never figgered out.”        Hank the Cowdog        Philosophizing in the 1998 children’s book Murder in the Middle Pasture (#4 in the Hank the Cowdog series), written by John R. Erickson

COEN BROTHERS WISDOM: “There’s what’s right and there’s what’s right and never the twain shall meet.”        H.I. McDunnough (actor Nicolas Cage)        Philosophizing in the 1987 Coen Brothers’ movie Raising Arizona (1987)

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Further reading: some recent collections of quotes…