Foujita aime représenter le quotidien avec minutie.
Les moustaches, les poils de la queue ou des oreilles
sont d'une rare finesse. Ces délicats traits rappellent
les dessins traditionnels japonais à l'encre sur papier.
De la même manière, les couleurs, peu nombreuses,
évoquent la pureté de l'art d'Extrême-Orient.

Le Garçon ou chat est sans équivalent dans !'oeuvre
de Renoir. Il est son unique nu masculin. On ignore
l'identité du modèle. Est-ce un simple modèle d'atelier?
Le peintre ne reprendra jamais ce thème. Il est trop
passionné par les femmes et en plaisante lui-même :
«je ne savais pas encore marcher que j'aimais déjà
les femmes! »

À partir de la Renaissance, le matou devient l'ami
des poètes et des artistes, il suscite même l'admiration
de Léonard de Vinci. L'arrivée des chats exotiques,
angoras ou persans, contribue à adoucir son image.
De la Renaissance au xv111 e siècle, il fait successivement
son entrée dans la peinture religieuse, les natures mortes,
les scènes de la vie quotidienne puis, avec un immense
succès, dans l'art du portrait. Au x1xe siècle, les peintres
s'identifient plus que jamais au chat de gouttière,
qu'ils contribuent à réhabiliter. Ils aiment représenter
ce compagnon mystérieux, solitaire, nocturne et
vagabond. De Delacroix à Gauguin, en passant par Manet,
Renoir ou Vallotton, tous les grands artistes se frottent
au thème félin. Les chats envahissent peintures, sculptures,
gravures, affiches et bibelots. Et la littérature n'est pas
en reste : Baudelaire, Maupassant, Pierre Loti ...
Oui n'aime pas les chats?

I could recognise him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.

“We have 18 or 19 plays by Euripides, for example, yet he is known to have written almost 100. Only 7 of Aeschylus’s 80 remain, while just 7 plays of Sophocles have come down to us out of 120 known titles. Almost every character you come across when reading the Greek myths had a play about them written by one, other, or all three of the great Athenian masters. The loss of so many of their works might be regarded as the greatest Greek tragedy of them all.”

“I will never forget my puzzlement when, in a vocabulary list, it presented the verb thaumazo, offering this helpful thought: “thaumazo, I wonder, or marvel at. This is easily remembered by thinking of the English word ‘thaumaturge.’” And I suppose that was true, since I’ve never forgotten it.”

“After all I've done for you? Medea kept her voice steady. 'Who was it who helped you defeat the fire-breathing oven and the great spent of the Grove of Area? Who was it who overcame Talos of Crete...'
Yes, yes, yes. But...”

“But when the day came, Admetus had a radical change of heart. He realized how much he loved Alcestis and how much less of a life he would have without her. In fact, he now saw that a long and endless existence alone would be worse than death.”

“Together Perseus and Andromeda look over their unruly shower of meteor children, the PERSEIDS, whom we can still watch showing off in the night sky once a year.”

“It is the fate of the young never to learn,” the centaur sighed. “I suppose it is arrogance and unwavering self-belief that propels them to their triumphs, just as surely as it is arrogance and unwavering self-belief that unseats them and sends them plummeting to their ends.”

“The Graeae’s names, as so often in Greek myth, have meanings. Pemphredo is “she who guides the way,” Enyo “warlike,” and Dino “terrible” (as in dinosaur, which means “terrible lizard”).”

“I had a disturbing dream last night. Most disturbing. Would you like to hear it?” “Absolutely,” lies Zeus, who has, in common with us all, a horror of hearing the details of anyone else’s dreams.”

“In the early days of gods and men, the divine trod the earth with mortals, befriended them, ravished them, coupled with them, punished them, tormented them, transformed them into flowers, trees, birds, and bugs, and in all ways interacted, intersected, intertwined, interbred, interpenetrated, and interfered with us.”

“Well, there is one thing. Perhaps you could change the child’s name.” “Change his name?” said Amphitryon. “How would that help?” “If you were to call him ‘Hera’s glory’ for instance? ‘Hera’s pride.’” And so it was decided. From now on Alcides would be called Heracles.”

“A fine statue of a naked Theseus stands proudly today in Athens' central place of assembly, the city's hub, Syntagma Square. Even today he is a focus of Athenian identity and pride. The ship he brought back from his adventures in the Labyrinth of Crete remained moored in the harbour at Piraeus, a visitor attraction right up to the days of historical ancient Athens, the time of Socrates and Aristotle. Its continuous presence there for such a long time caused the Ship of Theseus to become a subject of intriguing philosophical speculation. Over hundreds of years, its rigging, its planks, its hull, deck, keel, prow, stern and all its timbers had been replaced so that not one atom of the original remained. Could one call it the same ship? Am I the same person I was fifty years ago? Every molecule and cell of my body has been replaced many times over.”

“Nestor considered awhile before speaking, a habit of his that irked many but which guaranteed that nothing foolish ever came from his mouth.”

“Men! It’s not that they’re brutish, boorish, shallow and insensitive – though I dare say many are. It’s just that they’re so damned blind. So incredibly stupid. Men in myth and fiction at least. In real life we are keen, clever and entirely without fault of course.”

“Could they remember the first time they felt the sweeping rush of love? Love came to peasants, kings, and even gods. Love made all equal. Love deified, yet love leveled.”

“What walks on four feet in the morning, two feet at noon, and three in the evening?”

“Matters of immense import may depend on such issues, but we can never do more than guess the outcomes of the roads we do not take.”

“It is the destiny of children of spirit to soar too close to the sun and fall no matter how many times they are warned of the danger. Some will make it, but many do not.”

“The heroes cleansed our world of chthonic terrors -- earthborn monsters that endangered mankind and threatened to choke the rise of civilisation. So long as dragons, giants, centaurs and mutant beasts infested the air, earth and seas we could never spread out with confidence and transform the wild world into a place of safety for humanity.
In time, even the benevolent minor deities would find themselves elbowed out by the burgeoning and newly confident human race. The nymphs, dryads, fauns, satyrs and sprites of the mountains, streams, meadows and oceans could not compete with our need and greed for land to quarry, farm and build upon. The rise of a spirit of rational enquiry and scientific understanding pushed the immortals further from us. The world was being reshaped as a home fit for mortal beings only. Today, of course, some of the rarer and more vulnerable mortal creatures that have shared the world with us are undergoing the same threats to their natural territories that cuased the end of the nymphs and woodland spirits. Habitat loss and species extinction have all happened before.
The days of the gods themselves were numbered too. Prometheus's gift of fire, as Zeus had feared, would one day allow us to do even without the Olympians.”

“For many years Minos has been lucky to have in his court the most gifted inventor, the most skilled artificer outside of the Olympian forges of Hephaestus. His name is Daedalus and he is capable of fashioning moving objects out of metal, bronze, wood, ivory and gemstones. He has mastered the art of tightly coiling leaves of steel into powerful springs, which control wheels and chains to form intricate and marvellous mechanisms that mark the passage of the hours with great precision and accuracy, or control the levels of watercourses. There is nothing this cunning man cannot contrive in his workshop. There are moving statues there, men and women animated by his skill, boxes that play music and devices that can awaken him in the morning. Even if only half the stories of what Daedalus can achieve are true then you can be certain that no more cunning and clever an inventor, architect and craftsman has ever walked this earth.”

“You see?' said Prometheus. 'It is your fate to be Heracles the hero, burdened with labours, yet it is also your choice. You choose to submit to it. Such is the paradox of living. We willingly accept that we have no will.”

“No labour was more Heraclean than the labour of being Heracles.”

“Remember, cautioned the centaur. Modesty. Observance of the gods. In a fight do not do what you want to do, but what you judge you're enemy least wants you to. You cannot control others if you cannot control yourself. Those who most understand their own limitations have the fewest.”