Beetles Quotes - Page 2

• Without guilt / What is a man? An animal, isn't he? / A wolf forgiven at his meat, / A beetle innocent in his copulation.

  Archibald MacLeish

  Animal, Men, Guilt

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• A beetle may or may not be inferior to a man - the matter awaits demonstration; but if he were inferior by ten thousand fathoms, the fact remains that there is probably a beetle view of things of which a man is entirely ignorant. If he wishes to conceive that point of view, he will scarcely reach it by persistently revelling in the fact that he is not a beetle.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Views, Ignorant

  "The Defendant". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1901.

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• Sometimes I feel like a beetle crawling through a fusion power plant. I can feel a certain amount, see a certain amount, but I sure as hell don't understand everything.

  Greg Bear

  Fusion, Sometimes, Hell

  Greg Bear (2014). “Eon”, p.32, Open Road Media

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• In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness - inspissated gloom.

  Samuel Johnson

  Night, Ideas, Darkness

  In James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 2, p. 90 (16 October 1769)

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• All paths lie together in the hand of god like a web endlessly woven, and yours and mine are no greater or less than the beetle's or the squirrel's or the sparrow's. All are held together.

  Daniel Quinn

  Lying, Squirrels, Hands

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• The Creator would appear as endowed with a passion for stars, on the one hand, and for beetles on the other, for the simple reason that there are nearly 300,000 species of beetle known, and perhaps more, as compared with somewhat less than 9,000 species of birds and a little over 10,000 species of mammals.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Fondness

  "What is Life? The Layman's View of Nature". Book by John B. S. Haldane, p. 248, 1949.

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• Haldane was engaged in discussion with an eminent theologian. "What inference," asked the latter, "might one draw about the nature of God from a study of his works?" Haldane replied: "An inordinate fondness for beetles."

  John B. S. Haldane

  God, Might, Study

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• There appears to be a deeply embedded uneasiness in our culture about throwing away junk that can be reused. Perhaps, in part, it is guilt about consumption. Perhaps it also feels unnatural. Mother Nature doesn't throw stuff away. Dead trees, birds, beetles and elephants are pretty quickly recycled by the system.

  William Booth

  Mother, Elephants, Tree

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• I continue to handpick the beetles, mosquitoes feast on me, birds eat the mosquitoes, something else eats the birds, and so on up and down the biotic pyramid.

  William F. Longgood

  Pyramids, Bird, Mosquitoes

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• We can, for example, be fairly confident that either there will be a world without war or there won't be a world - at least, a world inhabited by creatures other than bacteria and beetles, with some scattering of others.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Example, World

  Chomsky, Noam “Essential Chomsky”, Penguin Books India

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• A tree is alive, and thus it is always more than you can see. Roots to leaves, yes-those you can, in part, see. But it is more-it is the lichens and moss and ferns that grow on its bark, the life too small to see that lives among its roots, a community we know of, but do not think on. It is every fly and bee and beetle that uses it for shelter or food, every bird that nests in its branches. Every one an individual, and yet every one part of the tree, and the tree part of every one.

  Elizabeth Moon

  Thinking, Roots, Community

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• I had two chances to fail [working for Disney]. The first one, they said was "too juvenile." The second one was,they give you general areas to work in. They said, "Set 'My Fair Lady' in ancient Egypt."I came up with this idea about an Egyptian princess, and I gave her, as a sidekick, a little scarab. I had a telephone meeting with the executive "handling" me, and he said, "I looked over the notes. Very cute. But lose the beetle.Beetles don't talk." Well, how do you answer that? I said, "Excuse me just a moment, I've got a teacup calling me on the other line."

  Charles Busch

  Cute, Princess, Ideas

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• We've both got into the blue beetle. He got into the red door, I got into the white one.

  Jim Butcher

  Blue, Doors, White

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• Nothing is more important than saving ... the Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels. The humans? The planet does not need humans.

  James Lee

  Squirrels, Turtles, Sharks

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• The stillness of the calm is awful. His voice begins to grow strange and portentous. He feels it in him like something swallowed too big for the esophagus. It keeps up a sort of involuntary interior humming in him, like a live beetle. His cranium is a dome full of reverberations. The hollows of his very bones are as whispering galleries. He is afraid to speak loud, lest he be stunned; like the man in the bass drum.

  Herman Melville

  Men, Voice, Whispering

  Herman Melville (1849). “Mardi: And a Voyage Thither”, p.21

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• I did not know that the planning for biological and chemical warfare was so widespread in England, and even in France before France fell. It was news to me that there had been talk, even in the First World War, of dropping Colorado beetles on German potato crops and that kind of thing.

  Nicholson Baker

  War, England, Colorado

  "Nicholson Baker: Human Smoke". Interview with James Mustich, www.barnesandnoble.com. April 7, 2008.

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• Mountain Pine bark beetles need -37°C (-35°F) for three days to freeze to death. Unfortunately, with global warming, that no longer happens in British Columbia [Canada]. This means the population of the beetles have exploded. They have destroyed more forests than all the environmentalists put together have saved.

  Mark Leiren-Young

  Mean, Together, Mountain

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• Life and death lived inside each other. That's what occured to me. Death was inside all of us, waiting for warmer nights, a compromised system, a beetle, as in the now dying black timber on the mountains.

  Peter Heller

  Night, Life And Death, Waiting

  Peter Heller (2012). “The Dog Stars”, p.68, Vintage

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• The beauteous dragonfly's dancing By the waves of the rivulet glancing; She dances here and she dances there, The glimmering, glittering flutterer fair. Full many a beetle with loud applause Admires her dress of azure gauze, Admires her body's bright splendour, And also her figure so slender...

  Heinrich Heine

  Dancing, Dresses, Dragonflies

  Heinrich Heine (1866). “The Poems of Heine: Complete”, p.520

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• On the waves of the brook she dances by, The light, the lovely dragon-fly; She dances here, she dances there, The shimmering, glimmering flutterer fair. And many a foolish young beetle's impressed By the blue gauze gown in which she is dressed; They admire the enamel that decks her bright, And her elegant waist so slim and slight.

  Heinrich Heine

  Light, Blue, Dragons

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• When the war was over and the guys were back to shaving every day, the editor thought the Beetle Bailey strips were hurting their disciplinary efforts to get the guys back to routine.

  Mort Walker

  Hurt, War, Editors

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• I had a great time investigating the pigments of different mutant fruit flies by following experimental protocols published in Scientific American, and I also remember making my own beetle collection when it was still acceptable to make such collections.

  Paul Nurse

  Fruit Flies, Mutants, Different

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• A hollow edifice erected for the habitation of man, rat, mouse, beetle, cockroach, fly, mosquito, flea, bacillus, and microbe.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Party, Men, House

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.92, 谷月社

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• SCARABAEUS, n. The sacred beetle of the ancient Egyptians, allied to our familiar "tumble-bug." It was supposed to symbolize immortality, the fact that God knew why giving it its peculiar sanctity. Its habit of incubating its eggs in a ball of ordure may also have commended it to the favor of the priesthood, and may some day assure it an equal reverence among ourselves. True, the American beetle is an inferior beetle, but the American priest is an inferior priest.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Eggs, Giving, Sacred

  Ambrose Bierce (2009). “The Devil's Dictionary: Easyread Super Large 18pt Edition”, p.328, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• It may not be irrelevant to note that even very modest forms of life, like earthworms, dung beetles and fiddler crabs, have no trouble identifying the real problems they must deal with if they are to survive.

  Edward Goldsmith

  Nature, Real, Animal

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