Moths Quotes - Page 3

• This is how moths speak to each other. They tell their love across the fields by scent. There is no mouth, the wrong words are impossible, either a mate is there or he is not, and if so the pair will find each other in the dark.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Dark, Mouths, Scent

  Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “Prodigal Summer”, p.44, Faber & Faber

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• I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.

  Emily Bronte

  Wind, Sky, Breathing

  Wuthering Heights ch. 34 (1847)

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• The [peppered-moth] experiments show the effects of predation on the survival of the dark and of the normal forms of the Peppered Moth in a clean environment and in one polluted by smoke. The experiments beautifully demonstrate natural selection--or survival of the fittest--in action, but they do not show evolution in progress, for however the population may alter in their content of light, intermediate or dark forms, all the moths remain from beginning to end Biston Betularia.

  L. Harrison Matthews

  Dark, Light, Survival

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• When somebody is a little bit wrong - say, when a waited puts nonfat milk in your espresso macchiato, instead of lowfat milk - it is often quite easy to explain to them how and why they are wrong. But if somebody is surprisingly wrong - say, when a waiter bites your nose instead of taking your order - you can often be so surprised that you are unable to say anything at all. Paralyzed by how wrong the waiter is, your moth would hang slightly open and your eyes would blink over and over, but you would be unable to say a word.

  Daniel Handler

  Eye, Often Is, Order

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• I love women. I love all the bright and attractive people and things of this world, the flame and also the moth, the dancer and the dance.

  Yves Saint Laurent

  Women, Flames, People

  Yves Saint Laurent (1983). “Catalog of the Exhibition Held at the Costume”, p.22, Metropolitan Museum of Art

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• But the good deed, through the ages Living in historic pages, Brighter grows and gleams immortal, Unconsumed by moth or rust.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Age, Rust, Deeds

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1848). “Poems”, p.102

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• What a moth might see from birth to death if black were white and white were black.

  Stan Brakhage

  White, Black, Might

  Stan Brakhage (1982). “Brakhage scrapbook: collected writings, 1964-1980”, Treacle Pr

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• I like the Moth podcast a lot. I listen to that.

  Gillian Jacobs

  Interview with Todd VanDerWerff, www.avclub.com. March 26, 2012.

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• I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.

  Mary Oliver

  Morning, Stars, Dark

  Mary Oliver (2017). “Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver”, p.368, Penguin

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• I came home one night, some month ago, and I went to the closet in my bedroom...and a moth ate my sports jacket. He was laying on the floor, nauseous, y'know.

  Woody Allen

  Sports, Home, Night

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• People fail you, children disappoint you, thieves break in, moths corrupt, but an Order of the British Empire goes on for ever.

  Fay Weldon

  Children, Order, People

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• He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths - so that he could 'come over' some afternoon to a stranger's garden.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Garden, Years, Afternoon

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2007). “The Great Gatsby”, p.105, Broadview Press

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• All we have observed is where moths do not spend the day. In 25 years we have found only two betularia on the tree trunks or walls adjacent to our traps (one on an appropriate background and one not), and none elsewhere

  Cyril Clarke

  Wall, Years, Two

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• In the darkness, who would answer for the color of a rose, Or the vestments of the May moth and the pilgrimage it goes?

  Nathalia Crane

  Color, Rose, Darkness

  Nathalia Crane (1925). “The Janitor's Boy and Other Poems”

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• Being kissed on the back of the knee is a moth at the windowscreen.

  Anne Sexton

  Knees

  Anne Sexton (1999). “Love Poems”, p.43, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• People are like moths. First they are ugly and awkward, until they break out of their shell and become a beautiful butterfly.

  Drew Barrymore

  Beautiful, Butterfly, People

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• You know what rumors are like-like a jar full of moths. Once they escape, they're all over the place.

  Rhys Bowen

  Rumor, Jars, Knows

  Rhys Bowen (2007). “Oh Danny Boy: A Molly Murphy Mystery”, p.99, Macmillan

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• 'Don't be the moth. Be the light bulb.' When I say that I mean don't follow the crowd. Just shine. Be the light bulb. Do your thing. Pave your own path.

  Sara Paxton

  Mean, Light, Shining

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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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• Moth to a flame I follow.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Flames

  Karen Marie Moning (2011). “Shadowfever: Fever Series”, p.61, Delacorte Press

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• Her lips were drawn to his like a moth to a flame.

  Anya Seton

  Flames, Lips, Love Passion

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• So each man, like each plant, has his parasites. A strong, astringent, bilious nature has more truculent enemies than the slugs and moths that fret my leaves. Such a one has curculios, borers, knife-worms; a swindler ate him first, then a client, then a quack, then smooth, plausible gentlemen, bitter and selfish as Moloch.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Selfish, Character

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.327

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• Into the mercy seat I climb My head is shaved, my head is wired And like a moth that tries To enter the bright eye I go shuffling out of life Just to hide in death awhile And anyway I never lied.

  Nick Cave

  Eye, Trying, Mercy

  Nick Cave (2007). “The Complete Lyrics: 1978-2013”, p.147, Penguin UK

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• If a night-moth were to concentrate its will on flying to a star or some equally unattainable object, it wouldn't succeed. Only, it wouldn't even try in the first place. A moth confines its search to what has sense and value for it, what it needs, what is indispensable to its life... if I imagined that I wanted under all circumstances to get to the North Pole, then to achieve it I would have to desire it strongly enough that my whole being was ruled by it. But if I were to decide to will that the pastor should stop wearing his glasses, it would be useless. That would be making a game of it.

  Hermann Hesse

  Stars, Night, Glasses

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• A story demanded to be written, and that is why I have not answered your letter before: a wrong-headed story, that would come blundering like a moth on my window, and stare in with small red eyes, and I the last writer in the world to manage such a subject. One should have more self-control. One should be able to say, Go away. You have come to the wrong inkstand, there is nothing for you here. But I am so weakminded that I cannot even say, Come next week.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Eye, Self, Next Week

  Sylvia Townsend Warner, William Maxwell (1982). “Letters”

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