Insects Quotes - Page 6

• The careful insect 'midst his works I view,
  Now from the flowers exhaust the fragrant dew,
  With golden treasures load his little thighs,
  And steer his distant journey through the skies.

  John Gay

  Flower, Journey, Views

  John Gay (1863). “The Poetical Works of John Gay: With a Life of the Author”, p.188

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• Heaven above was blue, and earth beneath was green; the river glistened like a path of diamonds in the sun; the birds poured forth their songs from the shady trees; the lark soared high above the waving corn; and the deep buzz of insects filled the air.

  Charles Dickens

  Song, Nature, Air

  Charles Dickens (1867). “Charles Dickens's works. Charles Dickens ed. [18 vols. of a 21 vol. set. Wanting A child's history of England; Christmas stories; The mystery of Edwin Drood].”, p.37

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• The summer day is closed - the sun is set:
  Well they have done their office, those bright hours,
  The latest of whose train goes softly out
  In the red west. The green blade of the ground
  Has risen, and herds have cropped it; the young twig
  Has spread its plaited tissues to the sun;
  Flowers of the garden and the waste have blown
  And withered; seeds have fallen upon the soil,
  From bursting cells, and in their graves await
  Their resurrection. Insects from the pools
  Have filled the air awhile with humming wings,
  That now are still for ever; painted moths
  Have wandered the blue sky, and died again

  William C. Bryant

  Summer, Flower, Garden

  William Cullen Bryant, “From: An Evening Revery”

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• I can say, if I like, that social insects behave like the working parts of an immense central nervous system: the termite colony is an enormous brain on millions of legs; the individual termite is a mobile neurone.

  Lewis Thomas

  Hard Work, Science, Brain

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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• I'll not hurt thee, says Uncle Toby, rising with the fly in his hand. Go, he says, opening the window to let it escape. Why should I hurt thee? This world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me.

  Laurence Sterne

  Hurt, Uncles, Animal

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• The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Time, Memories, Butterfly

  Rabindranath Tagore, Mohit Kumar Ray (2007). “Poems”, p.438, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

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• I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that’s the lot. There’s no mercy in things. There’s not even a Great Beyond. There’s nothing.

  John Fowles

  Thinking, Mercy, Dies

  John Fowles (1980). “The collector”, Dell Pub Co

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• The dragon-fly is dancing, - Is on the water glancing, She flits about with nimble wing, The flickering, fluttering, restless thing. Besotted chafers all admire Her light-blue, gauze-like, neat attire; They laud her blue complexion, And think her shape perfection.

  Heinrich Heine

  Thinking, Light, Blue

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• Ah, Meese has brought us her finest goblets! A moment, whilst Kruppe sweeps out cobwebs, insect husks and other assorted proofs of said goblets' treasured value.

  Steven Erikson

  Cobwebs, Moments, Finest

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• When we mistake what we can know for all there is to know, a healthy appreciation of one's ignorance in the face of a mystery like soil fertility gives way to the hubris that we can treat nature as a machine. Once that leap has been made, one input follows another, so that when the synthetic nitrogen fed to plants makes them more attractive to insects and vulnerable to disease, as we have discovered, the farmer turns to chemical pesticides to fix his broken machine.

  Michael Pollan

  Appreciation, Mistake, Ignorance

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• The positive evidence for Darwinism is confined to small-scale evolutionary changes like insects developing insecticide resistance....Evidence like that for insecticide resistance confirms the Darwinian selection mechanism for small-scale changes, but hardly warrants the grand extrapolation that Darwinists want. It is a huge leap going from insects developing insecticide resistance via the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection and random variation to the very emergence of insects in the first place by that same mechanism.

  William A. Dembski

  Want, Resistance, Firsts

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• Ants are the dominant insects of the world, and they've had a great impact on habitats almost all over the land surface of the world for more than 50-million years.

  E. O. Wilson

  Impact, Years, Land

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• I am inclined to believe that one who is a coward will be born after death as an insect or a worm, that there is no salvation for a coward even after millions of years of penance.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Believe, Years, Coward

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.3943, Manonmani Publishers

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• I want to find a language that transforms language itself into steel for the spirit--a language to use against these sparkling insects, these jets.

  Mahmoud Darwish

  Steel, Use, Want

  Mahmoud Darwish (2013). “Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982”, p.33, Univ of California Press

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• Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult - at least I have found it so - than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind...We behold the face of nature bright with gladness...We do not see, or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects and seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life.

  Charles Darwin

  Struggle, Bird, Singing

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• There had been a popular joke on Freedom, started by a man named Calder. Looking down from space, he had said, the dominant life forms on Earth were obviously the cereals and other grasses. They occupied all the most desirable and fertile land; and they had tamed insects and animals to care for them. In particular, they had domesticated the bipeds to nurture and cultivate them and to save and plant their seed. Now, watching the farmers, Alex could easily imagine that they were worshiping and genuflecting before their masters.

  Larry Niven

  Men, Animal, Space

  Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, Michael Flynn (2002). “Fallen Angels”, p.232, Baen Publishing Enterprises

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• ..."Are you okay?" he says, still looking at me, and I feel my smile slip, fade, and the silence that falls over us then is so total I can’t hear anything, not the rush-hiss of my heart pounding in my chest, not the sounds all around us; insects, wind, and the distant clatter of others’ lives in houses built close but not too close because when we look out our windows we all like to pretend that everything we see is ours. But Ryan is not mine.

  Elizabeth Scott

  Fall, Heart, Wind

  Elizabeth Scott (2010). “The Unwritten Rule”, p.81, Simon and Schuster

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• You cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog, the creature of a narrower sphere. You cannot speak of ice to a summer insect, the creature of a season.

  Zhuangzi

  Summer, Ocean, Ice

  Zhuangzi, Herbert Allen Giles (1909). “Teachings and Sayings of Chuang Tzu”, p.18, Courier Corporation

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• It skims in through the eye, and by means of the utterly delicate retina hurls shadows like insect legs inward for translation. Then an immense space opens up in silence and an endlessly fecund sub-universe the writer descends, and asks the reader to descend after him, not merely to gain instructions but also to experience delight, the delight of mind freed from matter and exultant in the strength it has stolen from matter.

  John Updike

  Mean, Eye, Space

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• Clouds of insects danced and buzzed in the golden autumn light, and the air was full of the piping of the song-birds. Long, glinting dragonflies shot across the path, or hung tremulous with gauzy wings and gleaming bodies.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Song, Autumn, Light

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (2013). “Collected Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Delphi Classics)”, p.2052, Delphi Classics

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• My grandmother lived in a universe filled with life. It was impossible for her to conceive of any creature - even the smallest insect, let alone a human being - as insignificant. In every leaf, flower, animal, and star she saw an expression of a compassionate universe, whose laws were not competition and survival of the fittest but cooperation, artistry and thrift. . . .

  Eknath Easwaran

  Stars, Flower, Grandmother

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• Now summer is in flower and natures hum
  Is never silent round her sultry bloom
  Insects as small as dust are never done
  Wi' glittering dance and reeling in the sun
  And green wood fly and blossom haunting bee
  Are never weary of their melody
  Round field hedge now flowers in full glory twine
  Large bindweed bells wild hop and streakd woodbine
  That lift athirst their slender throated flowers
  Agape for dew falls and for honey showers
  These round each bush in sweet disorder run
  And spread their wild hues to the sultry sun.

  John Clare

  Summer, Running, Sweet

  John Clare, Eric Robinson, David Powell (2004). “Major Works”, p.135, Oxford University Press, USA

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• From one point of view we can say that we have human bodies and are practicing the Buddha's teachings and are thus much better than insects. But we can also say that insects are innocent and free from guile, where as we often lie and misrepresent ourselves in devious ways in order to achieve our ends or better ourselves. From this perspective, we are much worse than insects.

  Dalai Lama

  Buddhist, Lying, Teaching

  "Dzogchen: Heart Essence of the Great Perfection" by Dalai Lama, Snow Lion Publications, 2004.

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• In 1847 I gave an address at Newton, Mass., before a Teachers' Institute conducted by Horace Mann. My subject was grasshoppers. I passed around a large jar of these insects, and made every teacher take one and hold it while I was speaking. If any one dropped the insect, I stopped till he picked it up. This was at that time a great innovation, and excited much laughter and derision. There can be no true progress in the teaching of natural science until such methods become general.

  Louis Agassiz

  Teacher, Laughter, Teaching

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• ... on these expanded membranes [butterfly wings] Nature writes, as on a tablet, the story of the modifications of species, so truly do all changes of the organisation register themselves thereon. Moreover, the same colour-patterns of the wings generally show, with great regularity, the degrees of blood-relationship of the species. As the laws of nature must be the same for all beings, the conclusions furnished by this group of insects must be applicable to the whole world.

  Henry Walter Bates

  Nature, Writing, Butterfly

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