quotations about bees
The bees got their governmental system settled millions of years ago, but the human race is still groping.
DON MARQUIS
Archy and Mehitabel
How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower!
ISAAC WATTS
Against Idleness
His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee's experience
Of clovers and of noon!
EMILY DICKINSON
Poems
Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing,
Till he hath lost his honey and his sting;
And being once subdued in armed tail,
Sweet honey and sweet notes together fail.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Troilus and Cressida
Here ever hum the golden bees
Underneath full-blossomed trees.
J.R. LOWELL
The Sirens
The murmer of a bee
A witchcraft yieldeth me.
If any ask me why,
'Twere easier to die
Than tell.
EMILY DICKINSON
Poems
And we had sugar of our own,
Ages before its name was known.
Those early homes 'neath forest trees,
Were ever musical with bees.
THOMAS MILLER
Birds, Bees, and Blossoms
Here again we touch one of the thousand enigmas of the waxen city; and it is once more proved to us that the habits and the policy of the bees are by no means narrow, or rigidly predetermined; and that their actions have motives far more complex than we are inclined to suppose.
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
The Life of the Bee
Bees work for man, and yet they never bruise
Their Master's flower, but leave it, having done,
As fair as ever and as fit to use;
So both the flower doth stay, and honey run.
GEORGE HERBERT
Providence
Wiser far than human seer,
Yellow-breeched philosopher!
Seeing only what is fair,
Sipping only what is sweet,
Thou dost mock at fate and care,
Leave the chaff and take the wheat.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"The Humble-Bee"
So sudden
The bees
They came flying
So violent
The bees
They came sly
So scary
The bees
They came wide
So wild
The bees
They came
crying
They said: "I take my time"
You take your time
Please take your time
I take my time
I take my time
ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
"Bees"
A comely old man as busy as a bee.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues and His England
The little bee returns with evening's gloom,
To join her comrades in the braided hive,
Where, housed beside their mighty honey-comb,
They dream their polity shall long survive.
C.T. TURNER
Summer Night in the Bee Hive
Where the bee sucks, there suck I;
In a cowslip's bell I lie.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Tempest
For the bee, honey is the ultimate reality. It represents the fulfillment of her life mission, the triumph over her enemies, the continuity of the hive, the justification for working herself to death. Honey is to bees what money in the bank is to people--a measure of prosperity and well-being. But there is nothing abstract or symbolic about honey, as there is about money.
WILLIAM LONGGOOD & PAMELA JOHNSON
The Queen Must Die: And Other Affairs of Bees and Men
God's little epigrams, the Bees,
Are pointed and impartial.
Could Martial rival one of these?
No, not even Martial.
RICHARD R. KIRKE
The Bees
Honey is sweet, but the bee stings.
GEORGE HERBERT
Jacula Prudentum
My banks they are furnished with bees,
Whose murmur invites one to sleep.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
A Pastoral Ballad
The bee that hath honey in her mouth, hath a sting in her tail.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues
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
Rural Sports