Quotes about cat
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George Wither photo

“Hang sorrow! care will kill a cat,
And therefore let ’s be merry.”

George Wither (1588–1667) English poet

Poem on Christmas; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Hang sorrow! care ’ll kill a cat", Ben Jonson, Every Man in his Humour, Act i. Sc. 3.

Hugo Ball photo
Tom Robbins photo

“My old cat is dead,
Who would butt me with his head.”

Henry Summers (1911–2005) British civil servant

"My Old Cat", as given in The Nation's Favourite Twentieth Century Poems, pub. BBC, 1999

Tucker Max photo

“You ever wake up in the middle of the night because a couple of cats are clawing each other to death outside your window? That's what it's like listening to you speak.”

Tucker Max (1975) Internet personality; blogger; author

The Absinthe Donuts Story http://www.tuckermax.com/archives/entries/date/the_absinthe_donuts_story.phtml#280,
The Tucker Max Stories

Joseph Stella photo
Craig Ferguson photo

“You die alone in your house, and your cat will eat you.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005–2014)

T.S. Eliot photo
John Heywood photo

“It had need to bee
A wylie mouse that should breed in the cats eare.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Part II, chapter 5.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Isaac Rosenberg photo
John Cheever photo

“My veins are filled, once a week with a Neapolitan carpet cleaner distilled from the Adriatic and I am as bald as an egg. However I still get around and am mean to cats.”

John Cheever (1912–1982) American novelist and short story writer

Letter to Philip Roth (May 10, 1982); The Letters of John Cheever (1989).

Christopher Moore photo
Daniel Handler photo
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson photo
Roy Blount Jr. photo
Katie Melua photo
Mike Ness photo
T.S. Eliot photo

“And we all say: OH!
Well I never!
Was there ever
A Cat so clever
As Magical Mr. Mistoffelees!”

Mr. Mistoffelees
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)

Eddie Izzard photo
Harold Lloyd photo
Ambrose Bierce photo
Philip K. Dick photo

“What about [my] books? How do I feel about them?
I enjoyed writing all of them. But I think that if I could only choose a few, which, for example, might escape World War Three, I would choose, first, Eye in the Sky. Then The Man in the High Castle. Martian Time-Slip (published by Ballantine). Dr. Bloodmoney (a recent Ace novel). Then The Zap Gun and The Penultimate Truth, both of which I wrote at the same time. And finally another Ace book, The Simulacra.
But this list leaves out the most vital of them all: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. I am afraid of that book; it deals with absolute evil, and I wrote it during a great crisis in my religious beliefs. I decided to write a novel dealing with absolute evil as personified in the form of a "human." When the galleys came from Doubleday I couldn't correct them because I could not bear to read the text, and this is still true.
Two other books should perhaps be on this list, both very new Doubleday novels: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and another as yet untitled Ubik]. Do Androids has sold very well and has been eyed intently by a film company who has in fact purchased an option on it. My wife thinks it's a good book. I like it for one thing: It deals with a society in which animals are adored and rare, and a man who owns a real sheep is Somebody… and feels for that sheep a vast bond of love and empathy. Willis, my tomcat, strides silently over the pages of that book, being important as he is, with his long golden twitching tail. Make them understand, he says to me, that animals are really that important right now. He says this, and then eats up all the food we had been warming for our baby. Some cats are far too pushy. The next thing he'll want to do is write SF novels. I hope he does. None of them will sell.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

"Self Portrait" (1968), reprinted in The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick (1995), ed. Lawrence Sutin

Dennis Miller photo

“I'm one of the more pessimistic cats on the planet. I make Van Gogh look like a rodeo clown.”

Dennis Miller (1953) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actor

The Rants

Cesare Pavese photo
Mark Satin photo

“It's how you get rid of cats. You get a 500-pound parakeet and teach it to say, "Here, kitty kitty kitty."”

Rick Cook (1944) American writer

The Wizardry Cursed (1991)

Włodzimierz Ptak photo

“I don't like to stay long outside of Kraków. I was always happy to go back there, just like a cat. Well, that's my mental structure.”

Włodzimierz Ptak (1928–2019) immunologist

Bętkowska, Teresa (August–September 2010). Mistrz niszowej dyscypliny http://www2.almamater.uj.edu.pl/126/17.pdf (PDF). Alma Mater (in Polish). Kraków: Jagiellonian University (126–127): pp. 41–46.

Robert A. Heinlein photo
China Miéville photo

“There are no cats in UnLondon, for example, because they’re not magic and mysterious at all, they’re idiots.”

Source: Un Lun Dun (2007), Chapter 12, “Safe Conduct” (p. 53)

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux photo

“I can call nothing by name if that is not his name. I call a cat a cat, and Rollet a rogue.”

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711) French poet and critic

Je ne puis rien nommer si ce n'est par son nom ;
J'appelle un chat un chat, et Rollet un fripon.
Satire I, l. 51
Satires (1716)

Amanda Palmer photo

“i am a herd of cats and a drunk shepherd with alzheimer’s all at once.
i am the walrus.”

Amanda Palmer (1976) American punk-cabaret musician

"EL FUCKING NIÑO, in which i post no pictures of pirates" at AFP : Amanda Palmer's blog http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/451829875/el-fucking-nino-in-which-i-post-no-pictures-of

Erwin Schrödinger photo

“If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.”

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

On the conditions of the "Schrödinger's cat" thought-experiment, as presented in The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics (1935), translated by John D. Trimmer http://www.tu-harburg.de/rzt/rzt/it/QM/cat.html

Natalie Merchant photo
Scott Lynch photo

““I never even liked cats all that much.”
“Surely you realize,” said Patience, “that cats are no great respecters of human opinion.””

Source: The Republic of Thieves (2013), Chapter 3 “Blood and Breath and Water” section 1 (p. 146)

John Heywood photo

“A cat may looke on a King.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Part II, chapter 5.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Neil Cavuto photo
Anthony Burgess photo

“He forgot that the Malays revere cats and that the Chinese merely relish them.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Enemy in the Blanket (1958)

Mikhail Bulgakov photo

“For some reason, cats are usually addressed familiarly, though no cat has ever drunk bruderschaft with anyone.”

Book Two in 'The Extraction of the Master', P/V
The Master and Margarita (1967)

Charles Darwin photo

“[blind_man] A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

This is attributed, with an expression of doubt as to its correctness, in Mathematics, Our Great Heritage: Essays on the Nature and Cultural Significance of Mathematics (1948) by William Leonard Schaaf, p. 163; also attributed in Pi in the Sky : Counting, Thinking and Being (1992) by John D. Barrow. There are a number of similar expressions to this with various attributions, but the earliest published variants seem to be quotations of Lord Bowen:
When I hear of an 'equity' in a case like this, I am reminded of a blind man in a dark room — looking for a black hat — which isn't there.
Lord Bowen, as quoted in "Pie Powder", Being Dust from the Law Courts, Collected and Recollected on the Western Circuit, by a Circuit Tramp (1911) by John Alderson Foote; this seems to be the earliest account of any similar expression. It is mentioned by the author that this expression has become misquoted as a "black cat" rather than "black hat."
An earlier example with "hat" as a learned judge is said to have defined the metaphysician, namely, as a blind man looking for a black hat in a dark room, the hat in question not being there Edinburgh Medical Journal, Volume 3 (1898)
With his obscure and uncertain speculations as to the intimate nature and causes of things, the philosopher is likened to a 'blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that is not there.'
William James, himself apparently quoting someone else's expression, in Some Problems of Philosophy : A Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy (1911) Ch. 1 : Philosophy and its Critics
A blind man in a dark room seeking for a black cat — which is not there.
A definition of metaphysics attributed to Lord Bowen, as quoted in Science from an Easy Chair (1913) by Edwin Ray Lankester, p. 99
A blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.
A definition of metaphysics attributed to Lord Balfour, as quoted in God in Our Work: Religious Addresses (1949) by Richard Stafford Cripps, p. 72
A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.
H. L. Mencken, as quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1977) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 427
A metaphysician is like a blind man in a dark room, looking for a black cat — which isn't there.
Variant published in Smiles and Chuckles (1952) by B. Hagspiel
Misattributed

Mickey Spillane photo
John Cheever photo
Taj El-Din Hilaly photo
Lily Allen photo
Eleanor H. Porter photo

“The only thing I care about is whether a monkey will turn out a property I can publish. I don't have any love for them. Never have. I don't really like animals. I despise cats. I hate dogs. How could you like monkeys?”

Harry Harlow (1905–1981) American psychologist

Interview with Pittsburgh Press-Roto, 1974. Quoted in Blum, Deborah. The Monkey Wars. Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 92.

MF Doom photo

“And since when the rap game had to do with killin a cat, what type o' chitlins is that?”

MF Doom (1971) hip hop artist from America

With DANGERDOOM, "Old School", The Mouse and the Mask (2005)
Sourced Lines

““What civilization would be complete without a cat?” the Professor went on. “What greater blessing to the home than the kindly yet watchful eye of this tiger of the fireside?””

Lloyd Alexander (1924–2007) American children's writer

Source: Time Cat (1963), Chapter 19 “Parker’s Perpetual Mousetraps” (p. 190)

David Hume photo
Robert Newman photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo

“Cats have no sense of humor, they have terribly inflated egos, and they are very touchy.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Source: The Door Into Summer (1957), Chapter 2

Neil deGrasse Tyson photo

“You don't take a dead cat to the vet. I mean you might, but why?”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

WNYC Radio Podcast, RadioLab, "Gravitational Anarchy" November 29, 2010, Minute 16:33.
2010s

Geezer Butler photo
Irvine Welsh photo
Rikki Rockett photo

“When I was in eighth grade there was a movie called Willard, about a rat, and I fell in love with rats. I wanted one … so one guy suggested that I call Hershey Medical Center … So I called and they said … "What experiment is it for?" I said, "I don't wanna experiment on it, I just want it for a pet!" And they said, "Well, we can't do that." … About two weeks later, I go out to the mailbox, and there's this thing from the [American Anti-Vivisection Society]. Lo and behold, I'm looking through all these different experiments and I see a rat there, spread wide open, and it said some of the experiments [were] done at Hershey med center. So boom! I put two and two together, and I decided to do a report in school about it. I took advanced bio and you had to dissect cats, and I started [asking] questions, "Where'd the cat come from?", and that really ruffled some feathers. "I'm not gonna do this, you know." So basically I got thrown out of advanced bio. From that point on I became an antivivisectionist. … [Things] are changing. When I went vegetarian it was really hard on the road, and that was just eight years ago. And I see people doing it twenty, twenty-five years, traveling, and it's like, wow! … I think on a very basic level people wanna do the right thing. And if we continue to focus on that part of them that wants to do the right thing, we can win maybe at the next generation or the one after that.”

Rikki Rockett (1961) American musician

"Something To Believe In" https://books.google.it/books?id=NWxF_V4r3PAC&pg=PA107, interview by Kirsten Rosenberg (July 1999), in Speaking Out for Animals, edited by Kim W. Stallwood, Lantern Books, 2001, pp. 107-112.

Meat Loaf photo

“You're not going to ask me that and if you did I'd pretend that you didn't because everybody and their mother plus their dog and cat and their goldfish asks me that.”

Meat Loaf (1947) American musician, singer, songwriter, record producer and actor

Response to the question "Where did you get the name "Meat Loaf"?" in an interview with Gary Brunnet (22 August 1993) http://www.angelfire.com/rock2/rockinterviews/meatloaf.html

Gregory Scott Paul photo
Anthony Burgess photo
John Donne photo