Carl Van Vechten Quotes

#1. Cleanliness in the cat world is usually a virtue put above godliness.

Carl Van Vechten

#2. Is a little experience too much to pay for learning to know oneself?

Carl Van Vechten

#3. I've photographed everybody from Matisse to Isamu Noguchi.

Carl Van Vechten

#4. Catnip is vodka and whisky to most cats.

Carl Van Vechten

#5. There is, indeed, no single quality of the cat that man could not emulate to his advantage.

Carl Van Vechten

#6. Note 4. For these and other reasons the cat is also very hard to photograph. The best photographs are instantaneous, as the mere breathing of a cat will blur the fur in a time exposure.

Carl Van Vechten

#7. Paris is not a city I should care to approach for the first time after I had passed forty.

Carl Van Vechten

#8. A thing of beauty is a boy forever.

Carl Van Vechten

#9. The cat seldom interferes with other people's rights. His intelligence keeps him from doing many of the fool things that complicate life.

Carl Van Vechten

#10. A cat is never vulgar.

Carl Van Vechten

#11. The cat, it is well to remember, remains the friend of man because it pleases him to do so and not because he must.

Carl Van Vechten

#12. The lack of imagination or invention most people display in naming pussies is almost beyond credence.

Carl Van Vechten

#13. As an inspiration to the author, I do not think the cat can be over-estimated. He suggests so much grace, power, beauty, motion, mysticism. I do not wonder that many writers love cats; I am only surprised that all do not.

Carl Van Vechten

#14. Cats seldom make mistakes, and they never make the same mistake twice.

Carl Van Vechten

#15. The cat is the only animal without visible means of support who still manages to find a living in the city.

Carl Van Vechten

#16. Cats have gnosis to a degree that is granted to few bishops.

Carl Van Vechten

#17. One meets the cat in nearly all forms of art ... curiously enough she is not a conspicuous figure in Roman or Greek art.

Carl Van Vechten

#18. An ordinary kitten will ask more questions than any five-year-old.

Carl Van Vechten