Wasps Quotes

• Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

  Jonathan Swift

  Inspirational, Law, Break Through

  A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1709) See Anacharsis 1

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• I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.

  Charles Darwin

  God, Garden, Thinking

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• Are we not wasps who spend all day in a fruitless attempt to traverse a window-pane - while the other half of the window is wide open?

  Wei Wu Wei

  Window Panes, Half, Wide

  "Fingers Pointing Towards the Moon: Reflections of a Pilgrim on the Way". Book by Wei Wu Wei, 1958.

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• Anger is as a stone cast into a wasp's nest.

  Pope Paul VI

  Anger, Nests, Stones

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• I am the queen of spades, I am the wasp that stings, I am the dark serpent. I am the invulnerable animal who passes through fire and is not burned.

  Elena Ferrante

  Queens, Dark, Animal

  Elena Ferrante (2005). “The Days of Abandonment”, p.64, Penguin

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• A man walks into a pet shop and says: "Give me a wasp." The shopkeeper replies: "We don't sell wasps." He says: "There's one in the window."

  Frank Carson

  Funny, Humor, Men

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• And books which told me everything about the wasp, except why.

  Dylan Thomas

  Book

  Dylan Thomas, “A Child's Christmas In Wales”

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• The serpent, the king, the tiger, the stinging wasp, the small child, the dog owned by other people, and the fool: these seven ought not to be awakened from sleep.

  Chanakya

  Inspirational, Dog, Kings

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• A wasp in a wig is altogether beyond the appliances of art.

  John Tenniel

  Art, Wigs, Appliances

  "The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll". Book by Stuart Dodgson Collingwood (p. 146), 1898.

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• Spring rain leaking through the roof dripping from the wasps' nest.

  Matsuo Basho

  Spring, Rain, May

  Matsuo Basho, “Spring Rain”

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• Let us turn elsewhere, to the wasps and bees, who unquestionably come first in the laying up of a heritage for their offspring.

  Jean-Henri Fabre

  Heritage, Firsts, Bees

  Jean-Henri Fabre (1998). “The Passionate Observer: Writings from the World of Nature”, Chronicle Books Llc

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• Scandal is an importunate wasp, against which we must make no movement unless we are quite sure that we can kill it; otherwise it will return to the attack more furious than ever.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Scandal, Return, Movement

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• A king who feared wasps once decreed that they were abolished. As it happened, they did him no harm. But he was eventually stung to death by scorpions.

  Idries Shah

  Kings, Fear, Scorpions

  Idries Shah (1983). “Reflections”, p.22, Octagon Press Ltd

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• It is in some ways more troublesome to track and swat an evasive wasp than to shoot, at close range, a wild elephant. But the elephant is more troublesome if you miss.

  C. S. Lewis

  Elephants, Track, Missing

  C. S. Lewis (2002). “The World's Last Night: And Other Essays”, p.72, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• If there is a rumor in the air about you, you'd better treat it as you would a wasp: either ignore it or kill it with the first blow. Anything else will just stir it up.

  James Alexander Thom

  Blow, Air, Rumor

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• This planet is an exquisitely arranged and interconnected system. What's controlled in one place is going to have consequences in another place. Our job as gardeners is to try and figure this out no matter how small our allotted space might be. Discipline has to be the watchword for our controlling hands. It means not gardening without thinking of the garden as a habitat: for mice, for squirrels, for bees and wasps. For other living creatures beyond ourselves.

  Marjorie Harris

  Life, Jobs, Mean

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• He's about as predictable as a Wasp on speed.

  Sid Waddell

  Speed, Predictable

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• Concerning the generation of animals akin to them, as hornets and wasps, the facts in all cases are similar to a certain extent, but are devoid of the extraordinary features which characterize bees; this we should expect, for they have nothing divine about them as the bees have.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Generations, Facts

  Aristotle (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Aristotle (Illustrated)”, p.1790, Delphi Classics

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• Our dream dashes itself against the great mystery like a wasp against a window pane. Less merciful than man, God never opens the window.

  Jules Renard

  Dream, Men, Window Panes

  Jules Renard (2008). “The Journal of Jules Renard”, p.243, Tin House Books

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• Alas! fond child, How are thy thoughts beguil'd To hope for honey from a nest of wasps? Thou may'st as well Go seek for ease in hell, Or sprightly nectar from the mouths of asps. The world's a hive, From whence thou canst derive No good, but what thy soul's vexation brings: But case thou meet Some petty-petty sweet, Each drop is guarded with a thousand stings.

  Francis Quarles

  Sweet, Children, Soul

  Francis Quarles, Robert Wilson (A. M.) (1839). “Emblems divine and moral”, p.17

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• At what point is a wasp ever going to have a chat with a spider?

  Karl Pilkington

  Spiders

  "The Ricky Gervais Show" podcast (Season 1, Episode 3), December 19, 2005.

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• Your house sounds like a train at midday, the wasps buzz, the saucepans sing, the waterfall enumerates the deeds of the dew . . .

  Pablo Neruda

  House, Sound, Dew

  Pablo Neruda (2007). “100 Love Sonnets”, p.79, Exile Editions, Ltd.

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• Petruchio: Come, come, you wasp; i' faith, you are too angry. Katherine: If I be waspish, best beware my sting. Petruchio: My remedy is then, to pluck it out. Katherine: Ay, if the fool could find where it lies. Petruchio: Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail. Katherine: In his tongue. Petruchio: Whose tongue? Katherine: Yours, if you talk of tails: and so farewell. Petruchio: What, with my tongue in your tail? Nay, come again, Good Kate; I am a gentleman.

  William Shakespeare

  Lying, Farewell, Gentleman

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• An historian without political passions is as rare as a wasp without a sting.

  Agnes Repplier

  Passion, Political, Historian

  Agnes Repplier (2009). “American Austen: The Forgotten Writing of Agnes Repplier”, Intercollegiate Studies Institute

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• Tis no extravagant arithmetic to say, that for every ten jokes, thou hast got an hundred enemies; and till thou hast gone on, and raised a swarm of wasps about thine ears, and art half stung to death by them, thou wilt never be convinced it is so.

  Laurence Sterne

  Art, Humor, Enemy

  Laurence Sterne (1847). “Works, Containing the Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent: A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, Sermons, Letters and C”, p.29

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