c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Words are not the answer. Only the feelings you as an individual get from them are.
— Matthew Donnelly
Take a step back and view the world through your eyes, not someone else’s. Listen to your heart and decide what you really want.
— Fennel Hudson, A Meaningful Life - Fennel's Journal - No. 1
Somewhere along the way people became afraid to be single. To be unmarried, separate from others and lost their individuality searching for it in society’s view of relationships.
— Sanjo Jendayi, I Now Pronounce You Single & Happy
As the man was bundled into an armoured police van, he turned and shouted: ‘Don’t waste your life following others! Be individual! Live your dreams!’I stood there thinking. He was right. Ours is a society of followers, trapped by an island mentality.
— Tahir Shah, The Caliph's House: A Year in Casablanca
We are flowers in the field seeking our individuality. We may seem similar but we are all unique, without exception. Everyone is special.
— Chloe Thurlow, Katie in Love
Create history and write your own.
— Amit Abraham
All these men recognized what they themselves valued, and lived according to these values regardless of their relationship to the values of their community. Each lived according to what brought them happiness and peace rather than commonplace prescriptions of the multitudes.
— Chris Matakas, My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu
You don't get harmony when everyone sings the same note.
— Doug Floyd
Every human being is a world in miniature. It has its own centre of observation, its own way of forming concepts and of arriving at conclusions, its own degree of sensibility, its own life's work to do, and its own destiny to reach. All these features may be encompassed by general conditions, governed by general laws, and subject to unforeseen influences and incidents, but within the sphere of their own activity, they constitute that great principle which we call individuality.
— Karl G. Maeser, School and Fireside
Nowadays, ads don't just sell a product. They sell an attitude! Look at this one! Here's a cool guy saying nobody tells him what to do. He does whatever he wants and he buys this product as a reflection of that independence. So basically, this maverick is urging everyone to express his individuality through conformity in brand-name selection?
— Bill Watterson, There's Treasure Everywhere: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection
The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.
— Eric Hoffer
Want to know the truth about belonging?It takes courage to belong. It takes bravery to show up in your own skin.It’s easy to fit in. It’s easy to blend in and hide your outrageousness.And it’s also the easiest way to lose the precious parts of you.You deserve to be seen. You deserve to be heard. You deserve to be known for the real deal that you are.Stop taking the easy way out. Stop trying to fit in.The best place in life is where you’re already okay.Come home to you. It’s where you belong.
— Anne Bechard
I only know how to be one thing. And that’s me. Take it or leave it. I don’t really give a shit.
— Peter Cimino
She could not have been born gray. Hercolor, her color of brown, was an essential part of her, not an accident. Her anger, timidity, brashness, gentleness, all were elements of her mixed being, her mixednature, dark and clear right through, like Baltic amber. She could not exist in the gray people's world. She had not been born.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
One of the telltale signs of one who has completely embraced their authentic self is that they are, with great consistency, the same person in public as they are behind closed doors. Until you learn how to access your authentic voice, the uniqueness of who you truly are will never be fully realized. What makes you special (just like everyone else) is that you were placed here on this planet to express the one-of-a-kind being only you can be.
— Dennis Merritt Jones, Your Redefining Moments: Becoming Who You Were Born to Be
It [the Harlem Renaissance] was a time of black individualism, a time marked by a vast array of characters whose uniqueness challenged the traditional inability of white Americans to differentiate between blacks.
— Clement Alexander Price, Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Being --- a state that is open to life yet connected to this moment" Cinderella in Focus: Cindy's Secret
— hlbalcomb
Have you ever considered that there might be something wrong with your brain?Oh, I think there might be something wrong with everyone else’s.
— Jennifer Weiner, Best Friends Forever
Or, as Sextus, the ancient Pythagorian philosopher, said, "The wise man is always similar to himself." -
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
Let your eyes see what they see, not what others want you to see. Let your ears hear what they naturally hear, not what others want you to hear. Let your mouth speak your mind freely and not be constrained by other people's approval or disapproval. Let your mind think what it wants to think and not let other people's demands dictate your thoughts. If your senses and your mind are not allowed to do what they want to do naturally, you are denying them their rights. When you cannot think, sense, feel, or act freely, then your body and mind are injured. Break these oppressions, and you will cultivate life.
— Liezi, Lieh-tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living
I am not a typical human being. I am me and don't try to be anything but that because God didn't give us all different fingerprints if he wanted us all to be the same. lol -- TAMMY WOOSTER
— Tammy Wooster
The point is that you are an individual inasmuch as you exist in a social matrix of others who respect your individuality and your right to make choices. That's concrete individuality: an individuality that it owes its existence to a kind of communal respect on the part of all the other individualities, and that it had better therefore respect them similarly.
— China Miéville, Perdido Street Station
They had been talking about astrology, a forbidden science that was not pursued in the cloister. Narcissus had said that astrology was an attempt to arrange and order the many different types of human beings according to their natures and destinies. At this point Goldmund had objected: "You're forever talking of differences - I've finally recognised a pet theory of yours. When you speak of the great difference that is supposed to exist between you and me, for instance, it seems to me that this difference is nothing but your strange determination to establish differences."Narcissus: "Yes. You've hit the nail on the head. That's it: to you, differences are quite unimportant; to me, they are what matters most. I am a scholar by nature; science is my vocation. And science is, to quote your words, nothing but the 'determination to establish differences.' Its essence couldn't be defined more accurately. For us, the men of science, nothing is as important as the establishment of differences; science is the art of differentiation. Discovering in every man that which distinguishes him from others is to know him.
— Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund
Being an outsider doesn't necessarily indicate any sort of social failing. We do not view a tuba player as musically challenged if he cannot play the violin.
— Alexandra Robbins, The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School
They, they, they. That was the problem with people like Joyce. They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people. It wasn't a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, the way integration always worked, a one-way street. The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around. Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasional exotic into its ranks. Only white culture had individuals. And we, the half-breeds and the college-degreed, take a survey of the situation and think to ourselves, Why should we get lumped in with the losers if we don't want to? We become only so grateful to lose ourselves in the crowd, America's happy, faceless marketplace; and we're never so outraged as when a cabbie drives past us or the woman in the elevator clutches her purse, not so much because we're bothered by the fact that such indignities are what less fortunate coloreds have to put up with every single day of their lives-- although that's what we tell ourselves-- but because we're wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and speak impeccable English and yet have somehow been mistaken for an ordinary nigger.Don't know who I am? I'm an individual!
— Barack Obama
He tried to explain and to convince. He knew, while he spoke, that it was useless, because his words sounded as if they were hitting a vacuum. There was no such person as Mrs. Wayne Wilmot; there was only a shell containing the opinions of her friends, the picture postcards she had seen, the novels of country squires she had read; it was this that he had to address, this immateriality which could not hear him or answer, deaf and impersonal like a wad of cotton.
— Ayn Rand
Genocide of the soul occurs when everyone else expects conformity based on false beliefs, that we should all think the same, act the same and aspire to be the same.---Tammy Wooster
— Tammy Wooster
Milk should be homogenized-not people.
— John E. Carspon
It's normal to dream about anything at all. It's not normal to dream someone else's dreams." -Arthur Mentis
— Carrie Vaughn, After the Golden Age
Never compare your insides to someone else's outsides.
— Rob Lowe, Love Life
A world of fully developed individuals is immune to the cult of collectivism.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
when you're a poetyou can dish out whatever'son your mind and you don't have toapologize for it
— Shannon Lynette, Skeletons
Talent is hereditary; it may be the common possession of a whole family (eg, the Bach family); genius is not transmitted; it is never diffused, but is strictly individual.
— Otto Weininger, Sex & character
More people should visit Antarctica, metaphorically speaking, on their own. That is one of the conclusions I have reached, one of my recommendations: explore something, even if it's just a bookshelf. Make a stab in the dark. Read off the beaten path. Your attention is precious. Be careful of other people trying to direct how you dispense it. Confront your own values. Decide what it is you are looking for an then look for it. Perform connoisseurship. We all need to create our own vocabulary of appreciation, or we are trapped by the vocabulary of others.
— Phyllis Rose, The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading
To the untrained eye, Ben had nothing, at least by the bizarre rules that governed high school. But really, Ben was one of the few who wasn't pretending, one of the few who was free.
— Jay Bell, Something Like Winter
It's idealistic, it's for love and gentleness, it's close to nature, it hurts nobody, it's voluntary. I can't see anything wrong with any of that.''Neither can I. The only trouble is, this commune will be inhabited by and surrounded by members of the human race.
— Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose
If we are cultivating fruit in an orchard, we wish that particular fruit to grow in its own way; we give it the soil it needs, the amount of moisture, the amount of care, but we do not treat the apple tree as we would the pear tree or the peach tree as we would the vineyard on the hillside. Each is allowed the freedom of its own kind and the result is the perfection of growth which can be accomplished in no other way. The time must come when the same freedom is allowed the individual; each in his own way must develop according to nature's purpose, the body must be but the channel for the expression of purpose, interest, emotion, labor. Everywhere freedom must be the sign of reason.
— Robert Henri, The Art Spirit: Notes, Articles, Fragments of Letters and Talks to Students, Bearing on the Concept and Technique of Picture Making, the Study of Art
To be successfully independent, you must view life as if all of your love ones are dead and the world is against you.
— John Yang aka Private83
A gifted violin player in danger of becoming a virtuoso and thus too attached to his instrument handed it over to the Oneida authorities and never played again. When a visiting Canadian teacher complained that the community did not foster “genius or special talent,” Noyes was delighted, replying, “We never expected or desired to produce a Byron, a Napoleon, or a Michelangelo.” You know you've reached a new plateau of group mediocrity when even a Canadian is alarmed by your lack of individuality.
— Sarah Vowell, Assassination Vacation
The fertilising conflict of individualities is the ultimate meaning of the personal life.
— H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia
Take pride in your uniqueness.You are powerful individual.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Her bluebird of happiness is teal.
— Allison Strine
I stood there in the doorway before you saw me and I watched you,' he said.'And I watched the other girls. And they all looked as though their faces came out of one mold. Yours didn’t.
— Margaret Mitchell
Because I’m not normal,” I said.“You say that as if it’s a bad thing, Percy. But you don’t realize how important you are.
— Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief
[M]an is not permitted without censure to follow his own thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the common road.
— John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Fuck I hate fucksWho think they’re so fucking greatThey know everything about fucking,When they’re just fucking fucks fucking!And no one changes the fucking worldWhen they keep fucking to another fuck’s fuck.
— Initially NO, Coal fire cream
He was like a man who had served a term in prison or had been to Harvard College or had left for a long time with foreigners in South America. He was like a person who had been somewhere that other people are not likely to go or had done something that others are not apt to do.
— Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
If only you would go to the university," he said. "Only enlightened and holy people are interesting, it's only they who are wanted. The more of such people there are, the sooner the Kingdom of God will come on earth. Of your town then not one stone will be left, everything will he blown up from the foundations, everything will be changed as though by magic. And then there will be immense, magnificent houses here, wonderful gardens, marvellous fountains, remarkable people.... But that's not what matters most. What matters most is that the crowd, in our sense of the word, in the sense in which it exists now -- that evil will not exist then, because every man will believe and every man will know what he is living for and no one will seek moral support in the crowd. Dear Nadya, darling girl, go away! Show them all that you are sick of this stagnant, grey, sinful life. Prove it to yourself at least!
— Anton Chekhov
Your hard-won triumphs can be wholly negated if you live in a climate where your victories are seen as threatening, incorrect, distasteful, or -- most crucially of all, for a teenage girl -- simply uncool. Few girls would choose to be right -- right, down into their clever, brilliant bones -- but lonely.
— Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman
That is the key of this collection, being yourself. Don't be into trends. Don't make fashion own you, but you decide what you are, what you want to express by the way you dress and the way to live.
— Gianni Versace
I cannot deny that Vera, in her own way--in the way of all human beings who are kind and not cruel--really is lovely.
— Jane Lotter, The Bette Davis Club
In Ankh-Morpork you can be whoever you want to be and sometimes people laugh and sometimes they clap, and mostly and beautifully, they don't really care.
— Terry Pratchett, Raising Steam
The time when you should most of all withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.
— Epicurus
We get swallowed up by the illusion that unless we can find a place to belong, we are going to be all alone in the world.
— Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism
But true individuality is more about being in tune with who you truly are, whether you're expressing yourself physically, mentally, or spiritually; individuality arises from living without fear of what other might think or say about you and without being swayed by their opinions, leaving you free to lead life without caring about judgments made by the outside world.
— Kat Von D., Go Big or Go Home: Taking Risks in Life, Love, and Tattooing
When focusing only on one's credentials one boasts his own incompetence in his capacity for discernment of the individual.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
A hero is not only a brave individual, but a brave individual that dares to be different.
— Keely Barton
What's truly important--and what I find myself forgetting and having to relearn--is that right here, right now, I am free. Free to be myself and to express myself.
— Kat Von D., Go Big or Go Home: Taking Risks in Life, Love, and Tattooing
This is my mind , i own it!
— Anthony Jacob
So, Don't Mix Up Your Way To Write Your Life Story With Others, Then Definitely It Won't Sell. You Only Know What You're Encountering In Every Single Step. Everyone's Shoes Won't Fit In Your Feet....
— Muhammad Imran Hasan
But every time I go to church with you, I feel like everyone's trying to trap me in a room and convert me.' Which, in truth, they are. 'I want you, and your family, to love me for who I am,' he shouts, 'To let me be who I am.
— Nicole Hardy, Confessions of a Latter-day Virgin: A Memoir
I not only stand on my two feet, but I walk on my two feet for my two feet.
— Keely Barton
Unhealthy families discourage individual expression. Everyone must conform to the thoughts and actions of the toxic parents. They promote fusion, a blurring of personal boundaries, a welding together of family members. On an unconscious level, it is hard for family members to know where one ends and another begins. In their efforts to be close, they often suffocate one another’s individuality.
— Susan Forward, Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life
We are fighting now to save that endangered species-the individual.
— Marty Rubin
We like to think of individuals as unique. Yet if this is true of everyone, then we all share the same quality, namely our uniqueness. What we have in common is the fact that we are all uncommon. Everybody is special, which means that nobody is. The truth, however, is that human beings are uncommon only up to a point. There are no qualities that are peculiar to one person alone. Regrettably, there could not be a world in which only one individual was irascible, vindictive or lethally aggressive. This is because human beings are not fundamentally all that different from each other, a truth postmodernists are reluctant to concede. We share an enormous amount in common simply by virtue of being human, and this is revealed by the vocabularies we have for discussing human character. We even share the social processes by which we come to individuate ourselves.
— Terry Eagleton, How to Read Literature
Ultimately everything depends on the quality of the individual, but our fatally short-sighted age thinks only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations...
— C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self
Be my God, so I can just be me.
— Laura Story
Penguins don't waste their time trying to fly. They’re unique. They know they were built for the water.
— Sidney Knight, Alex
There can't be that many individual souls. Not souls like mine. There isn't room. There can't be.
— Stephen Fry, The Liar
If you want to be a big success then it becomes a dick showing contest, and that's not what it's about. It can't be about 'My book sold more copies than your book.' It can't be about 'More people went to see my movie than went to see your movie.' If it is about that, then Danielle Steel must be an extraordinarily wonderful author because she sells so many copies. You can't do calculations that way.What interests me is holding the vision: doing something that is yours and making sure that it can't be like anyone else's.
— Clive Barker
The larger the group, the more toxic, the more of your beauty as an individual you have to surrender for the sake of group thought. And when you suspend your individual beauty you also give up a lot of your humanity. You will do things in the name of a group that you would never do on your own. Injuring, hurting, killing, drinking are all part of it, because you've lost your identity, because you now owe your allegiance to this thing that's bigger than you are and that controls you.
— George Carlin, Last Words
To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world is almost a palpable movement. To enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are diregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars.
— Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd
It is a brave thing to have courage to be an individual; it is also, perhaps, a lonely thing. But it is better than not being an individual, which is to be nobody at all.
— Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life
Success must include two things: the development of an individual to his utmost potentiality and a contribution of some kind to one's world.
— Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life
for meobedience to another is the decay of self.for though every being is similareach being is differentand to herd our differencesunder one lawdegrades each self.
— Charles Bukowski, Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit
If knowing yourself and being yourself were as easy to do as to talk about, there wouldn't be nearly so many people walking around in borrowed postures, spouting secondhand ideas, trying desperately to fit in rather than to stand out.
— Warren G. Bennis, On Becoming a Leader
Imitation cannot go above its model.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Divinity School Address
The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Divinity School Address
I am neither for conformity nor non-conformity. I am for individuality. If one's individuality is in effect non-conformity, then so be it. But basically, one's individuality consists of conformity--to one's self.
— Paul Krassner
Let each man hear his own music and live by it. The drums roll one way for one man, and another way for another. You have to listen for your own.
— Audie Murphy
Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those most sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Divinity School Address
...no one can afford not to be a man. No position can compensate for coming face to face with a robot when you are alone.
— Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life
You can keep waiting for somebody else to define you, or give you your place in the world, or you can decide that you're not just somebody's broken puppet anymore. Choose.
— David Fury
We must resist in-group thinking and practice seeing every soul as a brother or sister in a larger grouping of humans on earth.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
How good is good enough,since you are only good for your selfishness.
— Peter Adejimi
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
— Rudyard Kipling
It may have been quixotic, but it was magnificent.
— J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Every system of power in the world has a vested interest in weakening the individuality of its subjects and tries to weaken or it possible completely extinguish it.
— Christa Wolf, City of Angels or Overcoat of Dr. Freud
Every plant is an individual.Wrong again. We are not individuals at all, we are all connected. We are individuals the way each blossom on an apple tree is an individual.
— Dale Pendell, Pharmako/Poeia: Plant Powers, Poisons, and Herbcraft
To influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Well, to tell you the truth, I've thought of it often and often before, but he's such devilish good company is Huntingdon, after all - you can't imagine what a jovial good fellow he is when he's not fairly drunk, only just primed or half-seas-over - we all have a bit of a liking for him at the bottom of our hearts, though we can't respect him.''But should you wish yourself to be like him?''No, I'd rather be like myself, bad as I am.
— Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
I can be a better me than anyone can.
— Diana Ross
See with your own eyes, hear with your own ears, think your own thoughts, say what you must say, do what you must do, love all that you can and stand on your own two feet.
— Paul Palnik, Eternaloons: The Palnik Anthology
Nothing is the same.
— Silvia Hartmann
Each imagining himself to be the first last and only alone, whereas he is neither first last nor last nor only not alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity.
— James Joyce, Ulysses
Unlike 'other' religious belief systems in competition with Christianity, we have not been called to become 'absorbed' into the deity but rather brought into communion with God through union with Christ thereby maintaining our unique individuality and personal identity
— R. Alan Woods, Apologia: A Collection of Christian Essays
I'd trapped myself in a script.... But to be scripted at all is to be prepackaged, programmed, pinned to a page. Only the unwritten can truly live a life. So who I was, what I was, had to be unwritten.
— David James Duncan, The Brothers K
Knowing one's 'individuality'. - We are too prone to forget that in the eyes of people who are seeing us for the first time we are something quite different from what we consider ourselves to be: usually we are nothing more than a single individual trait which leaps to the eye and determines the whole impression that we make.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality
People worried about our passing over into some robotic state, but we were so much like robots already, programmed and easy to manipulate.
— Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King
In fact, being a unique individual is as much of a farce as trying to be like everyone else. Maybe more.
— Nora Raleigh Baskin, All We Know of Love
The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty.
— John Maynard Keynes
History. Language. Passion. Custom. All these things determine what men say, think, and do. These are the hidden puppet-strings from which all men hang.
— R. Scott Bakker, The Darkness That Comes Before
I am not a number
—  I am a free man.
When I say "I," I mean a thing absolutely unique, not to be confused with any other.
— Lola-Butterflie
At our present bad moment, we need above all to recover our sense of literary individuality and of poetic autonomy.
— Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages
People need to learn how to take the role of leader out of God's hands.
— Lionel Suggs
Typography fostered the modern idea of individuality, but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and integration
— Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
The author challenges how much sanctity has to do with sameness, as he says saints are as different from each other as those in any group -- even murderers.
— G.K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas
What's your name,' Coraline asked the cat. 'Look, I'm Coraline. Okay?''Cats don't have names,' it said.'No?' said Coraline.'No,' said the cat. 'Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.
— Neil Gaiman, Coraline
One day I was counting the cats and I absent-mindedly counted myself.
— Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh and Other Stories
A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.
— Ernest Hemingway
I would like to see anyone, prophet, king or God, convince a thousand cats to do the same thing at the same time.
— Neil Gaiman
You cannot live with a paw in each world.
— Erin Hunter, Into the Wild
Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat.
— Mark Twain
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
The smallest feline is a masterpiece.
— Leonardo da Vinci
A person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was gitting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or doubtful.
— Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad
Four will Become Two, Lion and Tiger will Meet in Battle, and Blood will Rule the Forest.
— Erin Hunter, A Dangerous Path
Throw a stick, and the servile dog wheezes and pants and stumbles to bring it to you. Do the same before a cat, and he will eye you with coolly polite and somewhat bored amusement. And just as inferior people prefer the inferior animal which scampers excitedly because someone else wants something, so do superior people respect the superior animal which lives its own life and knows that the puerile stick-throwings of alien bipeds are none of its business and beneath its notice. The dog barks and begs and tumbles to amuse you when you crack the whip. That pleases a meekness-loving peasant who relishes a stimulus to his self importance. The cat, on the other hand, charms you into playing for its benefit when it wishes to be amused; making you rush about the room with a paper on a string when it feels like exercise, but refusing all your attempts to make it play when it is not in the humour. That is personality and individuality and self-respect -- the calm mastery of a being whose life is its own and not yours -- and the superior person recognises and appreciates this because he too is a free soul whose position is assured, and whose only law is his own heritage and aesthetic sense.
— H.P. Lovecraft
Me-EHH-UF-ow
— P.C. Cast, Marked
Fire will save the Clan
— Erin Hunter, Twilight
The way to get on with a cat is to treat it as an equal - or even better, as the superior it knows itself to be.
— Elizabeth Peters, The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog
I am what I am. I would tell you what you want to know if I could, for you have been kind to me. But I am a cat, and no cat anywhere ever gave anyone a straight answer.
— Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn
There are no ordinary cats.
— Colette
Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.
— Mark Twain
Cats can work out mathematically the exact place to sit that will cause most inconvenience.
— Pam Brown
Is that vodka?" Margarita asked weakly.The cat jumped up in his seat with indignation."I beg pardon, my queen," he rasped, "Would I ever allow myself to offer vodka to a lady? This is pure alcohol!
— Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
My cat is not insane, she's just a really good actress.
— P.C. Cast, Untamed
I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through.
— Jules Verne
I've found that the way a person feels about cats-and the way they feel about him or her in return-is usually an excellent gauge by which to measure a person's character
— P.C. Cast, Marked
I thought maybe she'd whisk us off by magic, or at least hail a taxi. Instead, Bast borrowed a silver Lexus convertible."Oh, yes," she purred. "I like this one! Come along, children.""But this isn't yours," I pointed out."My dear, I'm a cat. Everything I see is mine." She touched the ignition and the keyhole sparked. The engine began to purr. [No, Sadie. Not like a cat, like an engine.]
— Rick Riordan, The Red Pyramid
I love them, they are so nice and selfish. Dogs are TOO good and unselfish. They make me feel uncomfortable. But cats are gloriously human.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island
Of course, maybe I'd end up like one of those crazy old people with, like, sixty cats. And one day, the neighbors would complain about the smell, and it would turn out I'd died and the cats had eaten me.Still, it might be nice to have a cat.
— Alex Flinn
On the other hand, I think cats have Asperger's. Like me, they're very smart. And like me, sometimes they simply need to be left alone.
— Jodi Picoult, House Rules
Such nonsense!" declared Dr Greysteel. "Whoever heard of cats doing anything useful!""Except for staring at one in a supercilious manner," said Strange. "That has a sort of moral usefulness, I suppose, in making one feel uncomfortable and encouraging sober reflection upon one's imperfections.
— Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
And then there were cats, thought Dog. He'd surprised the huge ginger cat from next door and had attempted to reduce it to cowering jelly by means of the usual glowing stare and deep-throated growl, which had always worked on the damned in the past. This time they had earned him a whack on the nose that had made his eyes water. Cats, Dog considered, were clearly a lot tougher than lost souls. He was looking forward to a further cat experiment, which he planned would consist of jumping around and yapping excitedly at it. It was a long shot, but it just might work.
— Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
Jaypaw narrowed his eyes. "I'm not as blind as you think.
— Erin Hunter
I hate cats."Death's face became a little stiffer, if that were possible. The blue glow in his eye sockets flickered red for an instant."I SEE," he said. The tone suggested that death was too good for cat haters.
— Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters
I’m a cat. We aren’t required to make sense.
— Seanan McGuire, A Local Habitation
Cats, as you know, are quite impervious to threats.
— Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog
Cats were not, in her experience, an animal with much soul. Prosaic, practical little creatures as a general rule. It would suit her very well to be thought catlike.
— Gail Carriger, Soulless
You put quite a fight for a tame kitty
— Erin Hunter, Into the Wild
As anyone who has ever been around a cat for any length of time well knows cats have enormous patience with the limitations of the human kind.
— Cleveland Amory, The Cat Who Came for Christmas
While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats.
— Mark Twain
When Rome burned, the emperor's cats still expected to be fed on time.
— Seanan McGuire, Rosemary and Rue
A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering.
— William S. Burroughs, The Cat Inside
Dogs come when they're called
—  cats take a message and get back to you later.
Dogs have important jobs, like barking when the doorbell rings, but cats have no function in a house whatsoever.
— W. Bruce Cameron, A Dog's Purpose
The cat wrinkled its nose and managed to look unimpressed. "Calling cats," it confided, "tends to be a rather overrated activity. Might as well call a whirlwind.
— Neil Gaiman, Coraline
Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority. But a good first step would be to build up a critical mass of those willing to 'come out,' thereby encouraging others to do so. Even if they can't be herded, cats in sufficient numbers can make a lot of noise and they cannot be ignored.
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
There is, incidently, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person.
— Dan Greenberg
Cats are cats . . . the world over!These intelligent, peace-loving, four-footed friends- who are without prejudice, without hate, without greed- may someday teach us something.-James Mackintosh Qwilleran
— Lilian Jackson Braun, The Cat Who Saw Stars
Cats are the lap-dancers of the animal world. Soon as you stop shelling out, they move on, find another lap. They're furry little sociopaths. Pretty and slick -- in love with themselves. When's the last time you saw a seeing-eye cat?
— Andrew Vachss, Safe House
Honestly I don't know why i have these parties""Because of your cat""That's true. Chairman Meow deserves my every effort
— Cassandra Clare, City of Bones
I was drawn to his aloofness, the way cats gravitate toward people who’d rather avoid them.
— Rachel Hartman, Seraphina
Arise from sleep, old cat,And with great yawns and stretchings...Amble out for love
— Kobayashi Issa, Japanese Haiku
Cats will amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw.
— Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
Cheshire Puss,' she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. 'Come, it's pleased so far,' thought Alice, and she went on. 'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?''That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.'I don't much care where—' said Alice.'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.'—so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.
— Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
Like all pure creatures, cats are practical.
— William S. Burroughs, The Cat Inside
Through all this horror my cat stalked unperturbed. Once I saw him monstrously perched atop a mountain of bones, and wondered at the secrets that might lie behind his yellow eyes.
— H.P. Lovecraft, The Rats in the Walls
Wolves eat cats for dinner. By God, I wanna be a wolf.~Kane Tyler~
— Lora Leigh, Elizabeth's Wolf
For, though the room was silent, the silence of half a hundred cats is a peculiar thing, like fifty individual silences all piled one on top of another.
— Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Cats cant speak, that's common sense.-Yoruichi 
— Tite Kubo
Cats gravitate to kitchens like rocks gravitate to gravity.
— Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
Witches were a bit like cats. They didn’t much like one another’s company, but they did like to know where all the other witches were, just in case they needed them.
— Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky
Madame Lefoux accepted a cup of tea and sat on another little settee, next to the relocated calico cat. The cat clearly believed Madame Lefoux was there to provide chin scratches. Madame Lefoux provided.
— Gail Carriger, Changeless
And the kittykats would have to erect scaffolding and a pulley to get him down. Mind you, I wouldn't put that past them. Sometimes when they are behind the sofa supposedly purring, I think they are drilling.
— Louise Rennison, Startled by His Furry Shorts
Cats never listen. They’re dependable that way; when Rome burned, the emperor’s cats still expected to be fed on time.
— Seanan McGuire, Rosemary and Rue
Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest we will ever come to love.
— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
October—You were sleeping so peacefully that I was loath to wake you. Duke Torquill, after demanding to know what I was doing in your apartment, has requested that I inform you of his intent to visit after ‘tending to some business at the Queen’s Court.’ I recommend wearing something clinging, as that may distract him from whatever he wishes to lecture you about this time. Hopefully, it’s your manners.You are truly endearing when you sleep. I attribute this to the exotic nature of seeing you in a state of silence.—Tybalt
— Seanan McGuire, A Local Habitation
My name is Skippito Friskito. (clap-clap)I fear not a single bandito. (clap-clap)My manners are mellow,I'm sweet like the Jell-o,I get the job done, yes indeed-o. (clap-clap)
— Judy Schachner, Skippyjon Jones
One cat just leads to another."[Letter from Finca Vigia, Cuba, to his first wife, Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (1943).]
— Ernest Hemingway, Selected Letters 1917-1961
The Chairman likes you.”“Is that good?”“I never date anyone my cat doesn’t like,” Magnus said easily, and stood up.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Ashes
After the group vet appointment--during which Lyle scratched the vet, the vet tech, and some poor woman minding her own business in the waiting room--we went back to Sabrina's and re-released the cats to their natural habitat.
— Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key
She smiled again. "Do you like cat?" she said."Yes," said Richard. "I quite like cats."Anaesthesia looked relieved. "Thigh?" she asked, "or breast?
— Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
One reason that cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.
— Gwendolyn Brooks, In the Mecca
In the silence I heard Bastet, who had retreated under the bed, carrying on a mumbling, profane monologue. (If you ask how I knew it was profane, I presume you have never owned a cat.)
— Elizabeth Peters, The Deeds of the Disturber
There is, incidentally, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person.
— Dan Greenberg
It always gives me a shiver when I see a cat seeing what I can't see.
— Eleanor Farjeon
Em, I am trying to have an important conversation!" shouted Seylin. "I will not change into a cat!
— Clare B. Dunkle, Close Kin
There are several cats smoothly moving about, which helped me greatly to relax, for I have always felt that no house is wholly bad where there are cats, and conversely, where there are several cats, a house is bound to be wonderfully charming.
— Hans Holzer, The Ghost Hunter: Chilling Tales of Real Life Hauntings
Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys?
— John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
If a cat spoke, it would say things like 'Hey, I don’t see the problem here.
— Roy Blount Jr.
The cat dropped the rat between its two front paws. "There are those," it said with a sigh, in tones as smooth as oiled silk, "who have suggested that the tendency of a cat to play with its prey is a merciful one - after all, it permits the occasional funny little running snack to escape, from time to time. How often does your dinner get to escape?
— Neil Gaiman, Coraline
Witches were a bit like cats. They didn’t much like one another’s company but they did like to know where all the other witches were, just in case they needed them. And what you might need them for was to tell you, as a friend, that you were beginning to cackle.
— Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky
...DAMNATION!'No device of the printer's art, not even capital letters, can indicate the intensity of that shriek of rage. Emerson is known to his Egyptian workers by the admiring sobriquet of Father of Curses. The volume as well as the content of his remarks earned him the title; but this shout was extraordinary even by Emerson's standards, so much so that the cat Bastet, who had become more or less accustomed to him, started violently, and fell with a splash into the bathtub.The scene that followed is best not described in detail. My efforts to rescue the thrashing feline were met with hysterical resistance; water surged over the edge of the tub and onto the floor; Emerson rushed to the rescue; Bastet emerged in one mighty leap, like a whale broaching, and fled -- cursing, spitting, and streaming water. She and Emerson met in the doorway of the bathroom.The ensuing silence was broken by the quavering voice of the safragi, the servant on duty outside our room, inquiring if we required his assistance. Emerson, seated on the floor in a puddle of soapy water, took a long breath. Two of the buttons popped off his shirt and splashed into the water. In a voice of exquisite calm he reassured the servant, and then transferred his bulging stare to me.I trust you are not injured, Peabody. Those scratches...'The bleeding has almost stopped, Emerson. It was not Bastet's fault.'It was mine, I suppose,' Emerson said mildly.Now, my dear, I did not say that. Are you going to get up from the floor?'No,' said Emerson.He was still holding the newspaper. Slowly and deliberately he separated the soggy pages, searching for the item that had occasioned his outburst. In the silence I heard Bastet, who had retreated under the bed, carrying on a mumbling, profane monologue. (If you ask how I knew it was profane, I presume you have never owned a cat.)
— Elizabeth Peters, The Deeds of the Disturber
Maurice watched them argue again. Humans, eh? Think they're lords of creation. Not like us cats. We know we are. Ever see a cat feed a human? Case proven.
— Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
Be careful with this one" said Dina, bending down to greet the cat. "All cats are half jinn, but I think she's three quarters.
— G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen
Nathanial can show me how to better control the change, but even so, you never have to worry about me turning into a cat again. Didn't you know, I'm allergic to cats.
— Jeaniene Frost, First Drop of Crimson
Prowling his own quiet backyard or asleep by the fire, he is still only a whisker away from the wilds.
— Jean Burden, Celebration Of Cats
I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance - a sharp, vindictive glance. 
— James Thurber
I have a cat, the pet that ranks just above a throw pillow in terms of required responsibility.
— Anna Quindlen, Rise and Shine
The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don't buy love for nothing.
— William S. Burroughs, The Cat Inside
Lecturing Brooks was as useful as lecturing a cat.
— Maureen Johnson, The Key to the Golden Firebird
Cats are a mysterious kind of folk.
— Walter Scott
Cats have it all - admiration, an endless sleep, and company only when they want it.
— Rod McKuen
Cats randomly refuse to follow orders to prove they can.
— Ilona Andrews, Magic Strikes
Fucking nightmares.My heart starts to slow down. Glancing down at the floor, I see Tybalt, who is glaring at me with a puffed-up tail. I wonder if he had been sleeping on my chest and I catapulted him off when I woke up. I don't remember, but I wish that I did, because it would've been hilarious.
— Kendare Blake, Anna Dressed in Blood
The only thing a cat worries about is what's happening right now. As we tell the kittens, you can only wash one paw at a time.
— Lloyd Alexander, Time Cat
Guilt isn't in cat vocabulary. They never suffer remorse for eating too much, sleeping too long or hogging the warmest cushion in the house. They welcome every pleasurable moment as it unravels and savour it to the full until a butterfly or falling leaf diverts their attention. They don't waste energy counting the number of calories they've consumed or the hours they've frittered away sunbathing.Cats don't beat themselves up about not working hard enough. They don't get up and go, they sit down and stay. For them, lethargy is an art form. From their vantage points on top of fences and window ledges, they see the treadmills of human obligations for what they are - a meaningless waste of nap time.
— Helen Brown, Cleo
Let us be honest: most of us rather like our cats to have a streak of wickedness. I should not feel quite easy in the company of any cat that walked around the house with a saintly expression.
— Beverley Nichols, Beverley Nichols' Cats' A Z