Hives Quotes

• He is not worthy of the honey-comb, that shuns the hives because the bees have stings.

  William Shakespeare

  Honey, Bees, Worthy

  William Shakespeare (1709). “The Works of Mr. William Shakespear: In Eight Volumes. Adorn'd with Cuts”

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• The little bee returns with evening's gloom, To join her comrades in the braided hive, Where, housed beside their might honey-comb, They dream their polity shall long survive.

  Charles Tennyson Turner

  Dream, Long, Bees And Honey

  Charles Tennyson Turner, James Spedding (1880). “Collected Sonnets, Old and New”

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• The beautiful laws of time and space, once dislocated by our inaptitude, are holes and dens. If the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead of honey, it will yield us bees.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Stupid, Hands

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.218, Modern Library

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• The two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.

  Jonathan Swift

  Light, Two, Bees And Honey

  The Battle of the Books (1704) See Matthew Arnold 27

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• For so work the honey bees, creatures that by a rule in nature teach the act of order to a peopled kingdom.

  William Shakespeare

  Order, Bees And Honey, Kingdoms

  'Henry V' (1599) act 1, sc. 2, l. 187

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• The revery alone will do
  If bees are few.

  Emily Dickinson

  Dream, Bees, Pollination

  Emily Dickinson, Helen Vendler (2010). “Dickinson”, p.522, Harvard University Press

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• Bees work for man, and yet they never bruise
  Their Master's flower, but leave it having done,
  As fair as ever and as fit to use;
  So both the flower doth stay and honey run.

  George Herbert

  Running, Flower, Men

  George Herbert (1835). “The Works of George Herbert: Poems”, p.121

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• To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, -

  Emily Dickinson

  Bees, Pollination, Clovers

  Emily Dickinson, Helen Vendler (2010). “Dickinson”, p.522, Harvard University Press

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• To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.

  Emily Dickinson

  Tragedy, Literature, Bees

  Emily Dickinson, Helen Vendler (2010). “Dickinson”, p.522, Harvard University Press

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• Life's too slippery for books, Clarice; anger appears as lust, lupus presents as hives.

  Thomas Harris

  Book, Lust, Slippery

  Thomas Harris (2009). “The Silence of the Lambs”, p.146, Macmillan

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• I will not doubt, though sorrows fall like rain, And troubles swarm like bees about a hive; I shall believe the heights for which I strive Are only reached by anguish and by pain; And though I groan and tremble with my crosses, I yet shall see, through my severest losses, The greater gain.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Faith, Pain, Fall

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2016). “Complete Poetical Works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Delphi Classics)”, p.599, Delphi Classics

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• What does not benefit the hive is no benefit to the bee.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Doe, Benefits, Bees

  Marcus Aurelius (2009). “Meditations”, p.43, Everyman's Library

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• We are the bees of the invisible. We madly gather the honey of the visible to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Honey, Golden, Bees

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• I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings.

  William Butler Yeats

  Peace, Morning, Wings

  "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" l. 1 (1893)

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• Pretty things will swarm you like that, like your heart was a hive of electric bees.

  Katherine Dunn

  Heart, Bees, Like You

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• If you want to move beyond hive-docility, you must become God the Moralist.

  Timothy Leary

  Moving, Want, Ifs

  Timothy Leary (2001). “Your Brain Is God”, p.34, Ronin Publishing

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• we are continually overflowing toward those who preceded us, toward our origin, and toward those who seemingly come after us. ... It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again “invisibly,” inside us. We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Essence, Tasks, Earth

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• I hadn't been out to the hives before, so to start off she gave me a lesson in what she called 'bee yard etiquette'. She reminded me that the world was really one bee yard, and the same rules work fine in both places. Don't be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don't be an idiot; wear long sleeves and pants. Don't swat. Don't even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates while whistling melts a bee's temper. Act like you know what you're doing, even if you don't. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.

  Sue Monk Kidd

  Thinking, Long, Bees

  Sue Monk Kidd (2003). “The Secret Life of Bees”, p.92, Penguin

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• As for me, I know nothing else but miracles,
  Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
  Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
  Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
  Or stand under the trees in the woods,
  Or talk by day with any one I love,
  Or sleep in bed at night with any one I love,
  Or watch honey bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon...
  Or the wonderfulness of the sundown,
  Or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
  Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring...
  What stranger miracles are there?

  Walt Whitman

  Summer, Beach, Stars

  Walt Whitman, “Miracles”

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• Introduction To Poetry I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.

  Billy Collins

  Wall, Mean, Names

  Billy Collins (2014). “The Apple That Astonished Paris: Poems”, p.58, University of Arkansas Press

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• Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge college is as solitary as a dervis in the desert.

  Henry David Thoreau

  College, Men, Space

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.83, Simon and Schuster

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• Before men we stand as opaque bee-hives. They can see the thoughts go in and out of us; but what work they do inside of a man they cannot tell. Before God we are as glass bee-hives, and all that our thoughts are doing within us he perfectly sees and understands.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Men, Glasses, Opaque

  Henry Ward Beecher, Augusta Moore (1859). “Notes from Plymouth Pulpit: A Collection of Memorable Passages from the Discourses of Henry Ward Beecher, with a Sketch of Mr. Beecher and the Lecture Room”, p.57

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• Faces in the everyday impress us as hives of subtlety. That impression must be sharpened in photography, which discloses only a microsecond of the face's behaviour, immersed in a social process.

  Max Kozloff

  Photography, Everyday, Behaviour

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• Five thousand years have added no improvement to the hive of the bee, nor to the house of the beaver; but look at the habitations and the achievements of men!

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Men, Years, House

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.289

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• Most plagiarists, like the drone, have neither taste to select, industry to acquire, nor skill to improve, but impudently pilfer the honey ready prepared, from the hive.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Skills, Drones, Honey

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.232

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