Poor dog! I've a strange feeling about the dumb things as if they wanted to speak, and it was a trouble to 'em because they couldn't. I can't help being sorry for the dogs always, though perhaps there's no need. But they may well have more in them than they know how to make us understand, for we can't say half what we feel, with all our words.

Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings in Prose and Verse: Selected from the Works of George Eliot (ed. 1873)