Hornets Quotes

• Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

  Jonathan Swift

  Inspirational, Law, Break Through

  A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1709) See Anacharsis 1

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• The wing structure of the hornet, in relation to its weight, is not suitable for flight, but he does not know this and flies anyway.

  Albert Einstein

  Wings, Doe, Weight

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• A slander is like a hornet; if you cannot kill it dead at the first blow, better not to strike at it.

  Josh Billings

  Blow, Firsts, Strikes

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• I may think that hornets do not have an ideal social organization. But I know better than to poke their nest.

  Fred Reed

  Thinking, Organization, May

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• From restless thoughts, that, like a deadly swarm Of hornets arm'd, no sooner found alone, But rush upon me thronging.

  John Milton

  Thinking, Anxiety, Arms

  John Milton, Elijah Fenton (1831). “Paradise Lost : a Poem in Twelve Books”, p.96

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• You will stir up the hornets.
  [Lat., Irritabis crabones.]

  Plautus

  Contention

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• You know, Jesse Jackson is just trying to stir up a hornet's nest.

  Ken Blackwell

  Trying, Nests, Knows

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• Concerning the generation of animals akin to them, as hornets and wasps, the facts in all cases are similar to a certain extent, but are devoid of the extraordinary features which characterize bees; this we should expect, for they have nothing divine about them as the bees have.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Generations, Facts

  Aristotle (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Aristotle (Illustrated)”, p.1790, Delphi Classics

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• The mad mob does not ask how it could be better, only that it be different. And when it then becomes worse, it must change again. Thus they get bees for flies, and at last hornets for bees.

  Martin Luther

  Mad, Doe, Different

  "Whether Soldiers Can Also Be in a State of Grace". Book by Martin Luther, 1526.

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• To anger an Aes Sedai is to put your head in a hornets' nest.

  Robert Jordan

  Nests

  Robert Jordan (2016). “The Wheel of Time: Books 1–4”, p.1005, Macmillan

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• I don't need to praise anything so justly famous as Frost's observation of and empathy with everything in Nature from a hornet to a hillside; and he has observed his own nature, one person's random or consequential chains of thoughts and feelings and perceptions, quite as well. (And this person, in the poems, is not the "alienated artist" cut off from everybody who isn't, yum-yum, another alienated artist; he is someone like normal people only more so - a normal person in the less common and more important sense of normal.)

  Randall Jarrell

  Cutting, Artist, People

  "Poetry and the Age" by Randall Jarrell, Vintage paperback, (p. 29), 1955.

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• A big business man was telling Henry Ford about a coach driver of super-expertness with his whip. The driver was telling how he could flick a fly off his horse's ear with his whip-and, a fly alighting just then, he promptly did so. Next he spied a grasshopper beside the road, and he flicked it off with equal dexterity. A little further along the road the passenger noticed an insect on a bush, and nudged the driver to get him. Not on your life, replied the master of the whip. That there insect is a hornet sitting on his nest with an organization behind him. I leave him alone.

  B. C. Forbes

  Horse, Business, Men

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• A jealous wife is like a hornets' nest in your mattress

  Robert Jordan

  Jealous, Wife, Nests

  Robert Jordan (2010). “A Crown of Swords: Book Seven of 'The Wheel of Time'”, p.122, Macmillan

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• Every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, water bugs, tadpoles, frogs, mud turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb. Brooks to wade, water lilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hayfields, pine-cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries and hornets; and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of education.

  Luther Burbank

  Children, Butterfly, Animal

  Luther Burbank (2000). “The Training of the Human Plant”, p.91, The Minerva Group, Inc.

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• When the hornet hangs in the hollyhock,
  And the brown bee drones in the rose,
  And the west is a red-streaked four-o'clock,
  And summer is near its close,
  It's, Oh!, For the gate, and the locust lane;
  And dusk, and dew, and home again!

  Madison Cawein

  Summer, Home, Rose

  Madison Julius Cawein, “In The Lane”

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• Mr. President at this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountain to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death.

  Robert Toombs

  Suicide, War, Ocean

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• I fell into a hornets' nest of revolutionary feminism.

  Julian Assange

  Feminism, Nests, Revolutionary

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• The issue of fracking is a stick in the hornet's nest.

  Titus Welliver

  Issues, Fracking, Nests

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• The firing on that fort will inaugurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen…you will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountains to ocean. Legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary. It puts us in the wrong. It is fatal.

  Robert Toombs

  War, Ocean, Mountain

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• Call in the Caped Crusader, Green Hornet, Kato, too. I'm in so much trouble I don't know what to do.

  Aretha Franklin

  Green, Trouble, Knows

  Song: Save Me

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• Some say that by fighting the terrorists abroad since September the 11th, we only stir up a hornets' nest. But the terrorists who struck that day were stirred up already. If America were not fighting terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, what would these thousands of killers do - suddenly begin leading productive lives of service and charity? ... We are dealing here with killers who have made the death of Americans the calling of their lives.

  George W. Bush

  Fighting, Productive Life, Iraq

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• It used to be cars had cool names: Dart, Hawk, Fury, Cougar, Firebird, Hornet, Mustang, Barracuda. Now we have Elantra, Altima, Acura, Lumina, Sentra, Corolla, Maxima, Tercel. Further proof that America has lost its edge.

  George Carlin

  Funny, Humor, Names

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• I here present thee with a hive of bees, laden some with wax, and some with honey. Fear not to approach! there are no wasps, there are no hornets here. If some wanton bee chance to buzz about thine ears, stand thy ground and hold thy hands-there's none will sting thee, if thou strike not first. If any do, she hath honey in her bag will cure thee too.

  Francis Quarles

  Hands, Honey, Buzz

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• Since the NBA purchased the New Orleans Hornets, final responsibility for significant management decisions lies with the Commissioner’s Office in consultation with team chairman Jac Sperling. All decisions are made on the basis of what is in the best interests of the Hornets. In the case of the trade proposal that was made to the Hornets for Chris Paul, we decided, free from the influence of other NBA owners, that the team was better served with Chris in a Hornets uniform than by the outcome of the terms of that trade.

  David Stern

  Lying, Team, Responsibility

  "Chris Paul Trade Drama: Reactions, News On David Stern Veto, Lakers, Hornets Deal, Training Camp". www.huffingtonpost.com. December 9, 2011.

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• My paintings have gotten to be pretty popular and I've taken a little bit more interest in painting the last few years. In fact, my novel that I wrote not too long ago, 'The Hornet's Nest,' I painted the cover picture for it and I do a good bit of painting now.

  Jimmy Carter

  Taken, Long Ago, Years

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