Oh cat; I’d say, or pray: be-ooootiful cat! Delicious cat! Exquisite cat! Satiny cat! Cat like a soft owl, cat with paws like moths, jeweled cat, miraculous cat! Cat, cat, cat, cat.
Doris Lessing (1919-2013) British author, biographer, playwright [b. Doris May Tayler]
Particularly Cats, ch. 5 (1967)
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Quotations about:
cats
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
There is, incidentally, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person.
Dan Greenburg (1936-2023) American writer, humorist, journalist
In Bill Hayward, Cat People (1978)
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Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near-perfect method of writing avoidance.
Dan Greenburg (1936-2023) American writer, humorist, journalist
In Bill Hayward, Cat People (1978)
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If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you. If a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) English mathematician and philosopher
In Lucien Price, ed., Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, Dialogue 25, 1941-12-10 (1954)
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Now a cat will not take an excursion merely because a man wants a walking companion. Walking is a human habit into which dogs readily fall but it is a distasteful form of exercise to a cat unless he has a purpose in view.
Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) American writer and photographer
The Tiger in the House: A Cultural History of the Cat, ch. 2 (1920)
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A friend and mourner recalled that, growing up, she believed cats and dogs were the same animal, but that cats were the females and dogs the males. This is entirely credible.
It is said that in Ulthar, which lies beyond the river Skai, no man may kill a cat; and this I can verily believe as I gaze upon him who sitteth purring before the fire. For the cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see. He is the soul of antique Aegyptus, and bearer of tales from forgotten cities in Meroe and Ophir. He is the kin of the jungle’s lords, and heir to the secrets of hoary and sinister Africa. The Sphinx is his cousin, and he speaks her language; but he is more ancient than the Sphinx, and remembers that which she hath forgotten.
H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) American fabulist [Howard Phillips Lovecraft]
“The Cats of Ulthar,” Tryout (Nov 1920)
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THE PROPHET: All cats can see futures, and see echoes of the past. We can watch the passage of creatures from the infinity of now, from all the worlds like ours, only fractionally different. And we follow them with our eyes, ghost things, and the humans see nothing.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British author, screenwriter, fabulist
Sandman, Book 3. Dream Country, # 18 “A Dream of a Thousand Cats” (1990-08)
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If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.
Doris Lessing (1919-2013) British author, biographer, playwright [b. Doris May Tayler]
Particularly Cats, ch. 2 (1967)
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Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.
Robertson Davies (1913-1995) Canadian author, editor, publisher
“Mehitabel,” Toronto Daily Star (21 Nov 1959)
Reprinted in The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies (1990).
Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are god.
Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) English intellectual, polemicist, socio-political critic
The Portable Atheist, Introduction (2007)
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Cats are autocrats of naked self-interest. They are both amoral and immoral, consciously breaking rules. Their “evil” look at such times is no human projection: the cat may be the only animal who savors the perverse or reflects upon it.
Camille Paglia (b. 1947) American feminist academic and social critic
Sexual Personae, ch. 2 (1990)
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Cats sleep fat and walk thin.
Rosalie Moore (1910-2001) American poet [Gertrude Elizabeth Moore]
“Catalogue,” New Yorker (25 May 1940)
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Cats are narcissistic. Their needs come before ours. They don’t understand the word No. They carry themselves with that aloof, arrogant sense of perpetual entitlement, they will jump up and insinuate themselves wherever they please — on your lap, on your newspaper, on your computer keyboard–and they really couldn’t care less how their behavior affects the people in their lives. I’ve had boyfriends like this; who needs such behavior in a housepet?
Caroline Knapp (1959-2002) American writer and columnist
“Lucille Versus Stumpy: The (Real) Truth About Cats and Dogs” (1998), The Merry Recluse (2004)
A rejoinder to her friend, Ron Rosenbaum, "Stumpy Versus Lucille: The Great Pet Debate," New York Observer (8 Aug 1998), where he extolled the virtues of cats over dogs.
Cats are rather delicate creatures and they are subject to a good many ailments, but I never heard of one who suffered from insomnia.
Joseph Wood Krutch (1893-1970) American educator, writer, critic, naturalist
The Twelve Seasons, “February” (1949)
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Cats, I always think, only jump into your lap to check if you are cold enough, yet, to eat.
“I meant,” said Ipslore bitterly, “what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?”
Death thought about it.
CATS, he said eventually, CATS ARE NICE.Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Sourcery (1988)
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This quote is more often repeated in paraphrase, e.g., "What is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile? Cats. Cats are nice."
There are two means of refuge from the misery of life: music and cats.
[Zweierlei eignet sich als Zuflucht vor den Widrigkeiten des Lebens: Musik und Katzen.]
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) Alsatian philosopher, physician, philanthropist, polymath
(Attributed)
Widely attributed to Schweitzer, but no original source found.
The coldest depth of Hell is reserved for people who abandon kittens.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
Friday [Friday Jones] (1982)
Technically, a cat locked in a box may be alive or it may be dead. You never know until you look. In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.
For, though the room was silent, the silence of half a hundred cats is a peculiar thing, like fifty individual silences all piled one on top of another.
Susanna Clarke (b. 1949) British author
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (2004)
CYNICAL CAT: Little one, I would like to see anyone — prophet, king or God — persuade a thousand cats to do anything at the same time.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British author, screenwriter, fabulist
Sandman, Book 3. Dream Country, # 18 “A Dream of a Thousand Cats” (1990-08)
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