“Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys?”

—  John Steinbeck , book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

Last update Nov. 2, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys?" by John Steinbeck?
John Steinbeck photo
John Steinbeck 366
American writer 1902–1968

Related quotes

Ricky Gervais photo

“Animals are not here for us to do as we please with. We are not their superiors, we are their equals. We are their family. Be kind to them.”

Ricky Gervais (1961) English comedian, actor, director, producer, musician, writer, and former radio presenter

Twitter, 17 November 2013; quoted in "Ricky Gervais Is PETA’s Person of the Year," PETA (23 December 2013) https://www.peta.org/blog/ricky-gervais-petas-person-year/

Rick Riordan photo

“We were alone in a strange mansion with a baboon, a crocodile, and a weird cat. And apparently, the entire world was in danger.
I looked at Sadie. “What do we do now?”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Émile Durkheim photo

“Everybody knows that we like those who resemble us, those who think and feel as we do. But the opposite is no less true. It very often happens that we feel kindly towards those who do not resemble us, precisely because of this lack of resemblance.”

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) French sociologist (1858-1917)

Source: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), p. 54

Anna Sewell photo

“We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.”

Anna Sewell book Black Beauty

Source: Black Beauty

Henry James photo

“Cats and monkeys — monkeys and cats — all human life is there!”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

The Madonna of the Future http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2460/2460-h/2460-h.htm (1879)
The Atlantic Monthly, March 1873 http://books.google.com/books?id=T4cGAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Cats+and+monkeys+monkeys+and+cats+all+human+life+is+there%22&pg=PA293#v=onepage

T.S. Eliot photo

“Yes the Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat —
And there isn't any call for me to shout it:
For he will do
As he do do
And there's no doing anything about it!”

T.S. Eliot book Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

The Rum Tum Tugger
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)

Victor Villaseñor photo

“Dog, cats, horses, all animals could do this at will much easier than us humans, Rosa and her husband Emilio, had explained to me, because animals were much closer to God than we humans were.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

Rich Mullins photo

“We do not find happiness by being assertive. We don't find happiness by running over people because we see what we want and they are in the way of that happiness so we either abandon them or we smash them. The Scriptures don't teach us to be assertive. The Scriptures teach us—and this is remarkable—the Scriptures teach us to be submissive. This is not a popular idea.”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

Seminar at LeSEA Broadcasting Studios in South Bend, Indiana http://www.christianitytoday.com/music/interviews/2003/richmullins-hiatranscript1.html (February 1993)

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson photo

“Cats are contented with their lot, with or without our approval. They have less need of us than we would like. It would flatter us to think that cats cannot survive without us, that they need us emotionally as well as materially, whereas in fact they probably do not need us in either sphere. This wounds our vanity. We need cats to need us. It unnerves us that they do not. However, if they do not need us, they nonetheless seem to love us.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Source: The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats (2002), Ch. 1

Related topics