I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through.
—Jules Verne (1828–1905) French Novelist
Take a cat, nourish it well with milk
And tender meat, make it a couch of silk,
But let it see a mouse along the wall
And it abandones milk and meat and all.
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400) English Poet, Philosopher, Diplomat, Bureaucrat
Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near-perfect method of writing avoidance.
—Daniel S. Greenberg (1931–2020) American Science Journalist
We love kitties, gawd bless their little whiskers, and we don’t give a damn whether they or we are superior or inferior! They’re confounded pretty, and that’s all we know and all we need to know!
—H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American Science-fiction Writer
A home without a cat—and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat—may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
It’s too dangerous a journey to risk the cat’s life.
—Charles Lindbergh (1902–74) American Aviator, Inventor, Conservationist
I said something which gave you to think I hated cats. But gad, sir, I am one of the most fanatical cat lovers in the business. If you hate them, I may learn to hate you. If your allergies hate them, I will tolerate the situation to the best of my ability.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
A cat bitten once by a snake dreads even rope.
—Arabic Proverb
Cruel, but composed and bland,
Dumb, inscrutable and grand,
So Tiberius might have sat,
Had Tiberius been a cat.
—Matthew Arnold (1822–88) English Poet, Critic
Those who’ll play with cats must expect to be scratched.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish Novelist
A cat is a tiger that is fed by hand.
—Common Proverb
Cats only pretend to be domesticated if they think there’s a bowl of milk in it for them.
—Robin Williams (1951–2014) American Actor, Comedian, Voice Artist
It’s better to feed one cat than many mice.
—Norwegian Proverb
I urged that kings were dangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure that a royal family of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as useful as any other royal family, they would know as much, they would have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition to get up shindies with other royal cats, they would be laughably vain and absurd and never know it, they would be wholly inexpensive, finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any other royal house…The worship of royalty being founded in unreason, these graceful and harmless cats would easily become as sacred as any other royalties, and indeed more so, because it would presently be noticed that they hanged nobody, beheaded nobody, imprisoned nobody, inflicted no cruelties or injustices of any sort, and so must be worthy of a deeper love and reverence than the customary human king, and would certainly get it.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
A cat pours his body on the floor like water.
—William Lyon Phelps (1865–1943) American Literary Scholar, Academic
It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.
—Deng Xiaoping (1904–97) Chinese Communist Statesman
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 Novelist, Poet
No matter how much the cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) American Head of State
A cat is a lion in a jungle of small bushes.
—Indian Proverb
The dog may be wonderful prose, but only the cat is poetry.
—French Proverb
Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.
—Robertson Davies (1913–95) Canadian Novelist, Playwright, Essayist
When the cat’s away, the mice will play.
—English Proverb
The way to keep a cat is to try to chase it away.
—E. W. Howe (1853–1937) American Novelist, Editor
A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
One of the problems of taking things apart and seeing how they work – supposing you’re trying to find out how a cat works—you take that cat apart to see how it works, what you’ve got in your hands is a non-working cat. The cat wasn’t a sort of clunky mechanism that was susceptible to our available tools of analysis.
—Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English Novelist, Scriptwriter
If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French Poet, Playwright, Film Director
Watch a cat when it enters a room for the first time. It searches and smells about, it is not quiet for a moment, it trusts nothing until it has examined and made acquaintance with everything.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Swiss-born French Philosopher
The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat.
—Jules Renard (1864–1910) French Writer, Diarist
Beware of people who dislike cats.
—Irish Proverb
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