quotations about bees
From Beavers, Bees should learn to mend their ways;
A Bee just Works; a Beaver Works and Plays.
ARTHUR GUITERMAN
A Poet's Proverbs
Science has finally discovered why bees hum--they don't know the words.
EVAN ESAR
attributed, 20,000 Quips & Quotes
He has a bee in his bonnet.
JOHN RAY
English Proverbs
Even bees, the little almsmen of spring bowers,
Know there is richest juice in poison flowers.
JOHN KEATS
Isabella
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
While Honey lies in Every Flower, no doubt,
It takes a Bee to get the Honey out.
ARTHUR GUITERMAN
A Poet's Proverbs
No bees, no honey; no work, no money.
AMERICAN PROVERB
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"
For where's the state beneath the firmament
That doth excel the bees for government?
GUILLAUME DE SALLUSTE DU BARTAS
Divine Weeks and Works
Forget not bees in winter, though they sleep.
VITA SACKVILLE-WEST
"Bee-Master", The Land
But when was ever honey made
With one bee in a hive?
THOMAS HOOD
The Last Man
The bees are buzzing, the birds have flown
Wild, wild honeycomb
BONNIE TYLER
"My! My! Honeycomb"
My banks they are furnished with bees,
Whose murmur invites one to sleep.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
A Pastoral Ballad
Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still.
DAVID FOSTER WALLACE
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
In the past, people around the world heard the buzzing of bees as voices of the departed, a murmured conveyance from the spirit world. This belief traces back to the cultures of Egypt and Greece, among others, where tradition held that a person's soul appeared in bee form when it left the body, briefly visible (and audible) in its journey to the hereafter.
THOR HANSON
Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees
In the nice bee, what sense, so subtly true,
From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew?
ALEXANDER POPE
Essay on Man
Their little bodies lodge a mighty soul.
VIRGIL
Georgics
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
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
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