Bees quotes
192 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside bees — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Every ant knows the formula of its ant-hill, every bee knows the formula of its beehive. They know it in their own way, not in our way. Only humankind does not know its own formula."
"Democracy does not contain any force which will check the constant tendency to put more and more on the public payroll. The state is like a hive of bees in which the drones display, multiply and starve the workers so the idlers will consume the food and the workers will perish."
"The revery alone will do If bees are few."
"I'm petrified of bees because I have an anaphylactic reaction to bees."
"Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still."
"We all know about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. It seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for studying the oyster."
"Reason is a bee, and exists only on what it makes; his usefulness takes the place of beauty."
"A bee is never as busy as it seems; it's just that it can't buzz any slower."
"No good sensible working bee listens to the advice of a bedbug on the subject of business."
"He is not worthy of the honey-comb, that shuns the hives because the bees have stings."
"I've said this over and over, but I'll say it a million more times - I'm concerned more about the death of a bee than I am about terrorism. Because we're losing hives and bees by the millions because of such strong pesticides."
"Speak with contempt of none, from slave to king, The meanest Bee hath, and will use, a sting."
"No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, there can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive."
"When a bee stings, she dies. She cannot sting and live. When men sting, their better selves die. Every sting kills a better instinct. Men must not turn bees and kill themselves in stinging others."
"There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance."
"Jim said that bees won't sting idiots, but I didn't believe that, because I tried them lots of times myself and they wouldn't sting me."
"I like Betsy Ross as a model, too, the quilting bee, sitting around with your friends making art, asking what they think, so that you get the benefit of everyone's opinions and so it's not just about you in your you-dom."
"Is there a polity better ordered, the offices better distributed, and more inviolably observed and maintained, than that of bees?"
"When I go hear a man speak, I like to hear him speak like he's fighting a swarm of bees."
"I like writing melody without an instrument. It's just so - it's more like the choreography of a bee; you just go."
