
Source: The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats (2002), Ch. 2
Time Enough for Love (1973)
Source: The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats (2002), Ch. 2
A Foreword to Krazy (1946)
Context: A humbly poetic, gently clownlike, supremely innocent, and illimitably affectionate creature (slightly resembling a child's drawing of a cat, but gifted with the secret grace and obvious clumsiness of a penguin on terra firma) who is never so happy as when egoist-mouse, thwarting altruist-dog, hits her in the head with a brick. Dog hates mouse and worships "cat", mouse despises "cat" and hates dog, "cat" hates no one and loves mouse.
“Waiting turns men into bears in a barn, and women into cats in a sack.”
Lini
(15 October 1993)
Source: The Fires of Heaven
“Pray use both cats as sponges if it pleases you, infatuated infantryman.”
Source: Castle in the Air
“Men do not know what they do not know, and women should not tell them.”
“The purpose of life is living. Men and women should get the most they can out of their lives.”
As quoted in Infidels and Heretics : An Agnostic's Anthology (1929) edited by Clarence Darrow and Wallace Rice, pp. 206 - 207
Context: The purpose of life is living. Men and women should get the most they can out of their lives. The smallest, tiniest intellect may be quite as valuable to society as the largest. It may be still more valuable to itself: it may have all the capacity for enjoyment that the wisest has. The purpose of man is like the purpose of the pollywog — to wriggle along as far as he can without dying; or to hang on until death takes him.
“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”
Christopher Soames, speech at the Reform Club (28 April 1981), reported in Martin S. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill. Volume Eight: Never Despair: 1945–1965. p. 304
Post-war years (1945–1955)
Variant: I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
Context: [Christopher Soames, Churchill's future son-in-law, remembered] Churchill showing him around Chartwell Farm [around 1946]. When they came to the piggery Churchill scratched one of the pigs and said: I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.