Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For God hath made them so.

These lines are from Isaac Watts’s moral poem “Against Quarrelling and Fighting,” written for children and widely circulated in early eighteenth-century primers and hymn/verse collections. Watts frames the couplet as part of a lesson in self-control: animals may follow their instincts, but humans are accountable for choosing restraint over aggression. The poem belongs to Watts’s broader project of providing devotional and ethical instruction in simple, memorable verse for young readers, contrasting “brute” behavior with the moral duties of a rational, Christian person.

The couplet uses dogs as an emblem of instinctive aggression: barking and biting are presented as natural to them—“God hath made them so.” The implicit contrast is with human beings, who should not excuse quarrelsome or violent conduct as merely “natural.” Watts’s point is not to praise canine ferocity but to sharpen a moral distinction: creatures without reason act according to their kind, whereas people, endowed with conscience and moral agency, are expected to govern anger and avoid fighting. The lines thus function as a rebuke to those who justify cruelty or belligerence by appealing to temperament.