Insects Quotes - Page 15

• The whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Cities, Rivers

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.181, Graphic Arts Books

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• The same Being that fashioned the insect, whose existence is only discerned by a microscope, and gave that invisible speck a system of ducts and other organs to perform its vital functions, created the enormous mass of the planet thirteen hundred times larger than our earth, and launched it in its course round the sun, and the comet, wheeling with a velocity that would carry it round our globe in less than two minutes of time, and yet revolving through so prodigious a space that it takes near six centuries to encircle the sun!

  Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux

  God, Two, Space

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 274), 1895.

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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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• [Man's] life consists in a relation with all things: stone, earth, trees, flowers, water, insects, fishes, birds, creatures, sun,rainbow, children, women, other men. But his greatest and final relation is with the sun.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Children, Flower, Men

  D. H. Lawrence, Michael Herbert (1988). “Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays”, p.374, Cambridge University Press

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• There are minds constructed like the eyes of certain insects, which discern, with admirable distinctness, the most delicate lineaments and finest veins of the leaf which bears them, but are totally unable to take in the ensemble of the plant or shrub. When error has effected an entrance into such minds, it remains there impregnable, because no general view assists them in throwing off the chance impression of the moment.

  Sophie Swetchine

  Eye, Errors, Views

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• Little minds mistake little objects for great ones, and lavish away upon the former that time and attention which only the latterdeserve. To such mistakes we owe the numerous and frivolous tribe of insect-mongers, shell-mongers, and pursuers and driers of butterflies, etc. The strong mind distinguishes, not only between the useful and the useless, but likewise between the useful and the curious.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Strong, Mistake, Butterfly

  Lord Chesterfield (1998). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.160, OUP Oxford

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• I do not doubt but the majest and beauty of the world are latent
  in any iota of the world;
  I do not doubt there is far more in trivialities, insects,
  vulgar persons, slaves, dwarfs, weeds, rejected refuse than
  I have supposed.

  Walt Whitman

  Weed, Doubt, World

  Walt Whitman (1861). “Leaves of Grass”, p.217

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• The spectacle [of American politics] resembles that of swarms of insects changing from worms to wings. They must get the wings ordie. For our salvation, Mr. Wilbur Wright is providing wings. He will also have to provide a new insect to use them.

  Henry Adams

  Wings, Use, Politics

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• In a cabinet of natural history, we become sensible of a certain occult recognition and sympathy in regard to the most unwieldy and eccentric forms of beast, fish, and insect.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sympathy, Nature, Fishing

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.66, Harvard University Press

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• Ambition is a meteor-gleam; Fame a restless airy dream; Pleasures, insects on the wing Round Peace, th' tend rest flow'r of spring.

  Robert Burns

  Dream, Spring, Ambition

  Robert Burns (1901). “The Poetry of Robert Burns: Posthumous pieces”

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• In time they sank and decayed, and nothing is left of them except an occasional impression in stones, in stones now found in deserts and on high mountain peaks. Birdless forests block the sun in uninhabited lands. Insects swirl in the air. And then, in a majestic, bloodthirsty, and mighty heave, the spinal columns of the vertebrates rise as monstrous lizards and fabulous creatures; dragons flinging their fearful bellows up to a steaming sky... Slowly they become birds, birds as light as undreamt dreams. The searing roars become birdsong, whimpering flutes on warm nights.

  Erik Fosnes Hansen

  Dream, Block, Night

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• Insect resistance to a pesticide was first reported in 1947 for the Housefly (Musca domestica) with respect to DDT. Since then resistance to one or more pesticides has been reported in at least 225 species of insects and other arthropods. The genetic variants required for resistance to the most diverse kinds of pesticides were apparently present in every one of the populations exposed to these man-made compounds.

  Francisco J. Ayala

  Men, Ddt, Population

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• Not quite birds, as they were not quite flowers, mysterious and fascinating as are all indeterminate creatures.

  Elizabeth Goudge

  Flower, Butterfly, Bird

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• Lobsters displays all three of the classic biological characteristics of an insect, namely: 1. It has way more legs than necessary. 2. There is no way you would ever pet it. 3. It does not respond to simple commands such as "Here, boy!"

  Dave Barry

  Boys, Simple, Pet

  Dave Barry (2009). “Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus”, p.110, Ballantine Books

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• Specialization is for insects... The race of man? He's a whole other creature.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Men, Race, Specialization

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• The best gardener is a baby killer. Baby insects are much easier to kill than adults, and haven't yet developed the big mouths and voracious appetite of the adolescent.

  Janet Macunovich

  Baby, Killers, Adults

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• If the outer world is diminished in its grandeur, then the emotional, imaginative, intellectual, and spiritual life of the human is diminished or extinguished. Without the soaring birds, the great forests, the sounds and coloration of the insects, the free-flowing streams, the flowering fields, the sight of clouds by day and the stars at night, we become impoverished in all that makes us human.

  Thomas Berry

  Spiritual, Stars, Night

  Thomas Berry (2011). “The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”, p.200, Crown

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• A river or stream is a cycle of energy from sun to plants to insects to fish. It is a continuum broken only by humans.

  Aldo Leopold

  Rivers, Broken, Sun

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• A Jew cannot be a true patriot. He is something different, like a bad insect. He must be kept apart, out of a place where he can do mischief - even by pogroms, if necessary. The Jews are responsible for Bolshevism in Russia, and Germany too. I was far too indulgent with them during my reign, and I bitterly regret the favors I showed the prominent Jewish bankers.

  Wilhelm II

  Regret, Russia, Bankers

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• I looked to animal and insect imagery to develop the lack of substance and wasted motion that my Terminator has. I tried to tap into the killer instinct inherent in animals, where they are locked onto a target and will walk through anything that gets between them and their intended target.

  Robert Patrick

  Animal, Target, Substance

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Insects leave (Madagascar periwinkle) Catharanthus roseus out of their diets. So, for that matter, do deer. The reason is that the plants are loaded with alkaloids so potent that they are the source of vincristine and vinblastine. These are drugs important in routines of chemotherapy for treating Hodgkin's disease and certain forms of leukemia.

  Allen Lacy

  Drug, Important, Madagascar

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• Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Animal, Men, Kingdoms

  Emile M. Cioran (1976). “The Trouble with Being Born”, Viking Books

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• Specialisation is for insects!

  Robert A. Heinlein

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• The heart should have fed upon the truth, as insects on a leaf, till it be tinged with the color, and show its food in every ... minutest fiber.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Heart, Color, Should Have

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1950). “Letters: selected & with an introd”

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• In handling a stinging insect, move very slowly.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Moving

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.323, Penguin

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