“The greater cats with golden eyes
Stare out between the bars.
Deserts are there, and the different skies,
And night with different stars.”

—  Vita Sackville-West

"The Greater Cats"
Kings Daughter (1929)
Context: The greater cats with golden eyes
Stare out between the bars.
Deserts are there, and the different skies,
And night with different stars.
They prowl the aromatic hill,
And mate as fiercely as they kill,
To roam, to live, to drink their fill;
But this beyond their wit know I:
Man loves a little, and for long shall die.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The greater cats with golden eyes Stare out between the bars. Deserts are there, and the different skies, And night …" by Vita Sackville-West?
Vita Sackville-West photo
Vita Sackville-West 39
English writer and gardener 1892–1962

Related quotes

Van Morrison photo

“Well it's a marvellous night for a moondance,
With the stars up above in your eyes.
A fantabulous night to make romance,
'Neath the cover of October skies.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Moondance
Song lyrics, Moondance (1970)

Chadwick Boseman photo

“I think there's a difference between a working actor, a movie star and a celebrity. They're all three different things.”

Chadwick Boseman (1976–2020) American actor
Rafael Correa photo

“What's the difference between a Republican and a Democrat? There is a greater difference between what I think in the morning and what I think in the afternoon than between those two parties.”

Rafael Correa (1963) 45th President of Ecuador

22 May 2012, interview The Julian Assange Show, Russia Today. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvUwC5JTAJY&t=18m43s

H. Rider Haggard photo

“On, on we went, till at last the east began to blush like the cheek of a girl. Then there came faint rays of primrose light, that changed presently to golden bars, through which the dawn glided out across the desert. The stars grew pale and paler still, till at last they vanished; the golden moon waxed wan, and her mountain ridges stood out against her sickly face like the bones on the cheek of a dying man. Then came spear upon spear of light flashing far away across the boundless wilderness, piercing and firing the veils of mist, till the desert was draped in a tremulous golden glow, and it was day.”

H. Rider Haggard book King Solomon's Mines

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 5, "Our March into the Desert"

“The difference between East Germans and North Koreans is day and night.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with the Reuters War College (April 2017)

Thomas Henry Huxley photo

“Regarded anatomically, the resemblances between the foot of Man and the foot of the Gorilla are far more striking and important than the differences. …be the differences between the hand and foot of Man and those of the Gorilla what they may—the differences between those of the Gorilla and those of the lower Apes are much greater.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

Source: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 110

John Adams photo

“Education makes a greater difference between man and man, than nature has made between man and brute.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Abigail Adams (29 October 1775), published Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife, Vol. 1 (1841), ed. Charles Francis Adams, p. 72
1770s
Context: Human nature with all its infirmities and depravation is still capable of great things. It is capable of attaining to degrees of wisdom and goodness, which we have reason to believe, appear as respectable in the estimation of superior intelligences. Education makes a greater difference between man and man, than nature has made between man and brute. The virtues and powers to which men may be trained, by early education and constant discipline, are truly sublime and astonishing. Newton and Locke are examples of the deep sagacity which may be acquired by long habits of thinking and study.

Samuel Richardson photo

“There hardly can be a greater difference between any two men, than there too often is, between the same man, a lover and a husband.”

Samuel Richardson book The History of Sir Charles Grandison

Vol. 4, letter 17.
Sir Charles Grandison (1753–1754)

Related topics