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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• 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 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 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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• 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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• 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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• You must walk sometimes perfectly free, not prying or inquisitive, not bent on seeing things. Throw away a whole day for a single expansion, a single inspiration of air. You must walk so gently as to hear the finest sounds, the faculties being in repose. Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Inspiration, Eye, Air

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• In the future, I mean to be a fine streamside entomologist. I'm going to start on that when I am much too old to do any of the two thousand things I can think of that are more fun than screening insects in cold running water

  Thomas McGuane

  Running, Fun, Mean

  Thomas McGuane (2014). “The Longest Silence: A Life in Fishing”, p.6, Vintage

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• Bird taxonomy is a difficult field because of the severe anatomical constraints imposed by flight. There are only so many ways to design a bird capable, say, of catching insects in mid-air, with the result that birds of similar habitats tend to have very similar anatomies, whatever their ancestry. For example, American vultures look and behave much like Old World vultures, but biologists have come to realize that the former are related to storks, the latter to hawks, and that their resemblances result from their common lifestyle.

  Jared Diamond

  Air, Bird, Design

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• I personally feel that parachute files give a more realistic impression of an insect to the fish that views the fly, since the hackles are in the same position as the insect's legs, and when tied with brightly colored hackles, these flies are easier to see on the float. A final advantage is that in rough water, a parachute-hackled dry fly will float longer and better than a conventional one

  Lefty Kreh

  Rivers, Lakes, Views

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• Each moss,
  Each shell, each drawling insect, holds a rank
  Important in the plan of Him who fram'd
  This scale of beings; holds a rack which, lost
  Would break the chain, and leave behind a gap
  Which Nature's self would rue.

  Benjamin Stillingfleet

  Self, Important, Rue

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• Iris all hues, roses, and jessamine Reared high their flourished heads between, and wrought Mosaic; underfoot the violet, Crocus, and hyacinth with rich inlay Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone Of costliest emblem: other creature here Beast, bird, insect, or worm durst enter none; Such was their awe of man.

  John Milton

  Men, Rose, Bird

  1665 Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.4, l.698-705.

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• We've got a good inspection system in Arizona managing products that come from other parts of the county that could carry insects that could become problematic.

  Carl E. Olson

  Arizona, Inspection, County

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• The clearest window that ever was fashioned if it is barred by spiders' webs, and hung over with carcasses of insects, so that the sunlight has forgotten to find its way through, of what use can it be? Now, the Church is God's window; and if it is so obscured by errors that its light is darkness, how great is that darkness!

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Errors, Light, Darkness

  Henry Ward Beecher, Edna Dean Proctor (1858). “Life Thoughts: Gathered from the Extemporaneous Discourses of Henry Ward Beecher”, p.32

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• Beasts, birds, and insects, even to the minutest and meanest of their kind, act with the unerring providence of instinct; man, the while, who possesses a higher faculty, abuses it, and therefore goes blundering on.

  Robert Southey

  Men, Bird, Abuse

  Robert Southey (1831). “Sir Thomas Marc Or Colloquies on the Progress und Prospects of Sceuly, 1”, p.153

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• So, naturalists observe, a flea; Hath smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.

  Jonathan Swift

  Fleas, Ems, Mathematics

  On Poetry" l. 337 (1733)

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• A standard saying among fly fishermen is that trout spend anywhere from 80 to 90 percent of their time feeding below the water's surface on the immature forms of aquatic insects. Some anglers are even more precise, but whatever the exact percentage , it's safe to say that to fully appreciate any tailwater fishery you will have to learn the fine art of nymphing.

  Ed Engle

  Art, Sea, Fishing

  Ed Engle (1991). “Fly Fishing the Tailwaters”, p.65, Stackpole Books

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• How would you like to have a thousand brilliantly colored cliff swallows keeping house in the eaves of your barn, and gobbling up insects over your farm at the rate of 100,000 per day? There are many Wisconsin farmsteads where such a swallow-show is a distinct possibility.

  Aldo Leopold

  House, Over You, Wisconsin

  Aldo Leopold, J. Baird Callicott, Eric T. Freyfogle (1999). “For the health of the land: previously unpublished essays and other writings”, Island Pr

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