Ants Quotes

He thought of the jungle, already regrowing around him to cover the scars they had created. He thought of the tiger, killing to eat. Was that evil? And ants? They killed. No, the jungle wasn't evil. It was indifferent. So, too, was the world. Evil, then, must be the negation of something man had added to the world. Ultimately, it was caring about something that made the world liable to evil. Caring. And then the caring gets torn asunder. Everybody dies, but not everybody cares. ~ Karl Marlantes

Our enemies did not cross our borders They crept through our weaknesses like ants. ~ Nizar Qabbani

I talk to my inner lover, and I say, why such rush?
We sense that there is some sort of spirit that loves
birds and animals and the ants
perhaps the same one who gave a radiance to you
in your mother's womb.
Is it logical you would be walking around entirely orphaned now?
The truth is you turned away yourself,
and decided to go into the dark alone.
Now you are tangled up in others, and have forgotten
what you once knew,
and that's why everything you do has some weird sense of failure in it. ~ Kabir

What strikes me most forcibly in the ants and beetles and other worthy insects is their astounding seriousness. They run to and fro with such a solemn air, as though their life were something of such importance! A man the lord of creation the highest being, stares at them, if you please, and they pay no attention to him. Why, a gnat will even settle on the lord of creation's nose, and make use of him for food. It's most offensive. And, on the other hand, how is their life inferior to ours? And why shouldn't they take themselves seriously, if we are to be allowed to take ourselves seriously? ~ Ivan Turgenev

Woodcutter. Cut my shadow from me. Free me from the torment of being without fruit. Why was I born among mirrors? Day goes round and round me. The night copies me in all its stars. I want to live without my reflection. And then let me dream that ants and thistledown are my leaves and my parrots. ~ Federico Garcia Lorca

I don't have many fears other than being unemployed, homeless, friendless, rejected by my family, covered with honey and tied to a bed of fire ants, the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz, squash, computer paper, ghosts named Maggie, falling out of the space shuttle right before it leaves the Earth's atmosphere, licorice, elves, lawnmowers, unwashed hands, waking hours and being romantically linked to Madonna and Alex Rodriguez. ~ Cary Clack

When it comes to wildlife, no state is deadlier than Florida. Let me count the ways: fire ants, mosquitoes, alligators, eastern diamondback rattlers, black bears, panthers, coral snakes, bull sharks, jellyfish, black widow spiders, water moccasins, wasps, crocodiles, pygmy rattlers, brown recluse spiders, wild boar, copperheads, scorpions, Burmese pythons. And ticks. No state has more attacks from fire ants, sharks, or snakes. Let's not forget Mother Nature, who is equally aggressive. Florida is the lightning capital of the United States, attracting by far the most strikes to ground, injuries (more than two thousand since 1959) and fatalities (nearly five hundred since 1959). About seven people die each year from lightning in the Sunshine State, accounting for about 15 percent of the total number of U.S. fatalities each year. ~ Joe Gisondi

If only they were truly ants, wee could step on them and crush them. ~ George R R Martin

I know that carrot is not the right word. I've
seen dragonflies and beetles, flying around, stuck together, one on the back of the other; I know it's
called mating. I know about ovipositors, for laying eggs, on leaves, on caterpillars, on the surface of the
water; they're right out on the page, clearly labeled, on the diagrams of insects my father corrects at
home. I know about queen ants, and about the female praying mantises eating the males. None of this is
much help. I think of Mr. and Mrs. Smeath, stark-naked, with Mr. Smeath stuck to the back of Mrs.
Smeath. Such an image, even without the addition of flight, will not do. ~ Margaret Atwood

Although this scouting gig sounded like a financial hit, it made Nonie extremely nervous. She feared someone slip--that someone being Buggy--and others would find out Nonie's secret. And if the wrong person caught wind that she could see and speak to the dead, word would spread through Clay Point like ants at a picnic. ~ Deborah Leblanc

The scent of sweet cherry had attracted hundreds of ants. They were crawling over it and into it, many drowning for their greed. ~ Clive Barker

And all of this leaves me wondering if this dream of mine-that out there, somewhere, hiding, there exists a guy who is cultured and calm, and smiley and faithful, who want´s to escape the rat-race with me and, apparently like the French, wear wellies and make cheese...Well, I wonder if it can possibly exist. I don´t want much...just someone who would flat on his stomach next to me in the garden watching ants carrying crumbs through the jungle of blades of grass. I wonder if that can ever exist, anywhere, for anyone. ~ Nick Alexander

For how tiny the world,
This ant's egg-and the sky! ~ Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib

The ants are my friends- they're blowing in the wind ~ Lorrie Moore

Ants offer special advantages for some important kinds of basic biological research. The colony is a superorganism. It can be analyzed as a coherent unit and compared with the organism in the design of experiments, with the individuals treated as the rough analogues of cells. ~ Bert Holldobler

All life is a complex of systems. Some creatures perform as networks (like mycelia), some as superorganisms (like ants and bees), some as individuals that cooperate (like humans, ravens, and wolves). But all living beings, as far as we know, have some kind of subjectivity that connects them to other subjectivities. ~ Julie J. Morley

but was this funny? was this funny? was this funny? why was this funny? why was Sugar Kane funny? why were men dressed as women funny? why were men made up as women funny? why were men staggering in high heels funny? why was Sugar Kane funny, was Sugar Kane the supreme female impersonator? was this funny? why was this funny? why is female funny? why were people going to laugh at Sugar Kane & fall in love with Sugar Kane? why, another time? why would Sugar Kane Kovalchick girl ukulelist be such a box office success in America? why dazzling-blond girl ukulelist alcoholic Sugar Kane Kovalchick a success? why Some Like It Hot a masterpiece? why Monroe's masterpiece? why Monroe's most commercial movie? why did they love her? why when her life was in shreds like clawed silk? why when her life was in pieces like smashed glass? why when her insides had bled out? why when her insides had been scooped out? why when she carried poison in her womb? why when her head was ringing with pain? her mouth stinging with red ants? why when everybody on the set of the film hated her? resented her? feared her? why when she was drowning before their eyes? I wanna be loved by you boop boopie do! why was Sugar Kane Kovalchick of Sweet Sue's Society Syncopaters so seductive? I wanna be kissed by nobody else but you I wanna! I wanna! I wanna be loved by you alone but why? why was Marilyn so funny? why did the world adore Marilyn? who despised herself? was that why? why did the world love Marilyn? wh ~ Joyce Carol Oates

Ants - the pious insect, Randolph called them: they fill me with oh so much admiration and ah oh so much gloom: such puritan spirit in their mindless march of Godly industry, but can so anti-individual a government admit the poetry of what is past understanding? Certainly the man who refused to carry his crumb would find assassins on his trail, and doom in every smile. As for me, I prefer the solitary mole: he is no rose dependent upon thorn and root, nor ant whose time of being is organized by the analterable herd: sightless, he goes his separate way, knowing truth and freedom are attitudes of the spirit. ~ Truman Capote

Children start off reading in books about lions and giraffes and so on, but they also-if theyre lucky enough and have reasonable privileges of any human being-are able to go into a garden and turn over stone and see a worm and see a slug and see an ant. ~ David Attenborough

People are like ants: Just a few of them give all the orders. And most of them spend their lives getting squashed. ~ Lauren Oliver

Dreams are often dangerous.
Those endowed with an imagination don't run a way from this world, They think about the fate of all its creatures. They worry even about the flowers and the ants.
But someone with a dream wants to make everyone service his dream.
Ghazalnus ~ Bakhtiyar Ali

And real talk, like, seeing these ants and studying them and respecting them, it's like, man, they're in their own community too. They're trying to survive. They love. They fight. They telling themselves something. We can't understand, but one day we will. ~ Brandon McCartney

Sunk in the grass of an empty lot on a spring Saturday, I split the stems of milkweed and thought about ants and peach pits and death and where the world went when I closed my eyes. ~ Toni Morrison

You look within and upon and around me, savoring every inch. You pull my ear for no reason, and I can tell you really don't want to cry. As a tear falls between by breasts, I look away and pretend the grass is a jungle, and the ants, little kings of forgotten tribes. ~ Virginia Petrucci

Mel opened her jaw wide to stretch it out before she spoke again so that her words were very clear. "I am going to kill you. I'm going to drag your sorry carcass out into the desert, pour honey all over you, and let the fire ants eat you."
"You're angry," he said.
"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Mel snapped. ~ Jenn McKinlay

One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a bellum, a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed, the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely. ~ Henry David Thoreau

He roused from a joyous dream of feasting, of drinking blood and sucking warm marrow from the bone. His sons and daughters swarmed like ants upon the surface of the Earth, ripe in their terror, delectable in their anguish. He swept them into his mouth and their insides ran in black streams between his lips and matted his beard. This sweet dream rapidly slipped away as he stretched and assessed his surroundings. He shambled forth from the great cavern in the mountain that had been his home for so long. ~ Laird Barron

Ants are good citizens, they place group interests first. ~ Clarence Day

Darwin's Bestiary

PROLOGUE


Animals tame and animals feral
prowled the Dark Ages in search of a moral:
the canine was Loyal, the lion was Virile,
rabbits were Potent and gryphons were Sterile.
Sloth, Envy, Gluttony, Pride - every peril
was fleshed into something phantasmic and rural,
while Courage, Devotion, Thrift - every bright laurel
crowned a creature in some mythological mural.


Scientists think there is something immoral
in singular brutes having meat that is plural:
beasts are mere beasts, just as flowers are floral.
Yet between the lines there's an implicit demurral;
the habit stays with us, albeit it's puerile:
when Darwin saw squirrels, he saw more than Squirrel.



1. THE ANT


The ant, Darwin reminded us,
defies all simple-mindedness:
Take nothing (says the ant) on faith,
and never trust a simple truth.
The PR men of bestiaries
eulogized for centuries
this busy little paragon,
nature's proletarian -
but look here, Darwin said: some ants
make slaves of smaller ants, and end
exploiting in their peonages
the sweating brows of their tiny drudges.


Thus the ant speaks out of both
sides of its mealy little mouth:
its example is extolled
to the workers of the world,
but its habits also preach
the virtues of ~ Philip Appleman

When giants fought, ants were crushed. ~ Rachel Caine

I used to be someone who would not even tread on an ant. But this is a war for honor and self-defense. A 100 percent elimination policy (by Ankara of the Kurds) has forced me to defense and it has become a glorious defense of a people. ~ Abdullah Ocalan

It's a child's world, full of separate places. Give me a paper and pencil now and ask me to draw a map of the fields I roamed when I was small, and I cannot do it. But change the question, and ask me to list what was there and I can fill pages. The wood ant's nest. The newt pond. The oak covered in marble galls. The birches by the motorway fence with fly agarics at their feet. These things were the waypoints of my world. And other places became magic through happenstance. When I found a huge red underwing moth behind the electricity junction box at the end of my road, that box became a magic place. I needed to check behind it every time I walked past, though nothing was ever there. I'd run to check the place where once I'd caught a grass snake, look up at the tree that one afternoon had held a roosting owl. These places had a magical importance, a pull on me that other places did not, however devoid of life they were in all the visits since. ~ Helen Macdonald

It wont be long now it wont be long man is making deserts of the earth it wont be long now before man will have used it up so that nothing but ants and centipedes and scorpions can find a living on it. ~ Don Marquis

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. ~ Mark Twain

At times, feeling the wind on my brow, I went numb with horror. In my imagination I saw armies of ants and cockroaches calling to one another and scurrying toward my head, to some place under the top of my skull, where they would build new nests. There they would proliferate and eat out my thoughts, one after another, until I would become as empty as the shell of a pumpkin from which all the fruit has been scraped out. ~ Jerzy Kosinski

I love the old stuff that's why I included it. I did see them play a lot as they supported the Banshees all the time. And I was a friend of the Banshees so I used to get there early to see the Ants and while the Banshees were on I used to like to go in their dressing room and steal their booze! ~ Marco Pirroni

If the human being is condemned and restricted to perform the same functions over and over again, he will not even be a good ant, not to mention a good human being. ~ Norbert Wiener

I started making houses for ants because I thought they needed somewhere to live. Then I made them shoes and hats. It was a fantasy world I escaped to where my dyslexia didn't hold me back and my teachers couldn't criticize me. That's how my career as a micro-sculptor began. ~ Willard Wigan

Let us inquire what glory there was in an omnipotent being torturing forever a puny little creature who could in no way defend himself? Would it be to the glory of a man to fry ants? ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The time has come to link ecology to economic and human development. When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all. What is happening to the rain forests of Madagascar and Brazil will affect us all. ~ E. O. Wilson

What reason, like the careful ant, draws laboriously together, the wind of accident sometimes collects in a moment. ~ Friedrich Schiller

We're all ants. I'm a glittery little ant. ~ Alanis Morissette

We must limit the running to and fro which most men practise, rambling about houses, theatres, and marketplaces. They mind other men's business, and always seem as though they themselves had something to do. If you ask one of them as he comes out of his own door, "Whither are you going?" he will answer, "By Hercules, I do not know: but I shall see some people and do something." They wander purposelessly seeking for something to do, and do, not what they have made up their minds to do, but what has casually fallen in their way. They move uselessly and without any plan, just like ants crawling over bushes, which creep up to the top and then down to the bottom again without gaining anything. Many men spend their lives in exactly the same fashion, which one may call a state of restless indolence. ~ Seneca.

I once heard the survivors of a colony of ants that had been partially obliterated by a cow's foot seriously debating the intention of the gods towards their civilization. ~ Don Marquis

Some girls are like ants in your pants ~ P.G. Wodehouse

You do not want to live in a country ruled by people who never have any doubts. To have doubts is human. A horse has no doubts, a grasshopper has no doubts, an ant has no doubts. But a human being stops to think sometimes, and when he thinks, he hears a voice asking quietly, 'Are you certain that you are right? You must be certain before you pull that trigger. You must be certain before you put your knife to that man's throat.'
Would God have given us the power to question if he wanted us to behave like grasshoppers and ants? I am sure God takes pleasure in all the creatures of the world, but I am also sure that his greatest pleasure is a human being who puts his knife away because he is not sure, because a doubt has come into his mind. ~ Najaf Mazari

A couple of customers interrupted [...] who wanted to know if we had some YA book about ants and aliens I'd never heard of. ~ Shaun David Hutchinson

By the time she had picked every visible corpse off her property, the heap included ants, beetles and cockroaches, different kinds of spiders, some bees, flies, a wasp, two fetid lizard skins and the brittle remains of their skeletons, six butterflies, a stick insect the length of her forearm, two dragonflies, a handful of crickets and other creatures that in the world of naming remained untitled. The collection measured a full hand deep. She paid no attention to the odour rising out of the bucket. The scent of decay was not offensive to her. It was the aroma of life refusing to end. It was the aroma of transformation. Such odour was proof that nothing truly ended, and she revelled in it as much as she did the cereus blossoms along the back wall of the house. ~ Shani Mootoo

I look at an ant and I see myself: a native South African, endowed by nature with a strength much greater than my size so I might cope with the weight of a racism that crushes my spirit. ~ Miriam Makeba

My mother is a wonderful, eccentric lady who has no concept whatever of interior monologue. We'll be driving along in the car and she'll suddenly say, 'Ants don't like cucumbers, you know. And roaches don't like cinnamon. Do you want some cheese, Michael? Rembrandt was the Lord of the day.'
-Mike Myers ~ Mitchell Symons

Personally, I would rather climb in the high mountains. I have always abhorred the tremendous heat, the dirt-filled cracks, the ant-covered foul-smelling trees and bushes which cover the cliffs, the filth and noise of Camp 4 (the climbers' campground), and worst of all, the multitudes of tourists which abound during the weekends and summer months. ~ Yvon Chouinard

I simply cannot see why one would wish to picnic in the nude. There would be ants in dreadful places. ~ Cassandra Clare

Cordyceps." "That's a fungus? Never heard of it." "Says here it does something to an ant's brain, reprograms it like it's a machine, makes it climb to the top of a plant before it dies - " "An invisible machine that reprograms brains? I'm fairly certain that's not a random entry." "Yeah? So what does it mean, then?" "It means ... It means we aren't free. None of us are. ~ Hugh Howey

I've got my full rucksack pack and it's spring, I'm going to go Southwest to the dry land, to the long lone land of Texas and Chihuahua and the gay streets of Mexico night, music coming out of doors, girls, wine, weed, wild hats, viva! What does it matter? Like the ants that have nothing to do but dig all day, I have nothing to do but what I want and be kind and remain nevertheless uninfluenced by imaginary judgments and pray for the light. ~ Jack Kerouac

If a mosquito has a soul, it is mostly evil. So I don't have too many qualms about putting a mosquito out of its misery. I'm a little more respectful of ants. ~ Douglas Hofstadter

The fact that we can't easily foresee clues that would betray an intelligence a million millennia farther down the road suggests that we're like ants trying to discover humans. Ask yourself: Would ants ever recognize houses, cars, or fire hydrants as the work of advanced biology? ~ Seth Shostak

Pray to Him anyway you like, He can even hear the footfall of an ant. ~ Ramakrishna

Ants are terrifying, having survived for 130 million years, evolving into a monarchical society of soldiers with bizarre levels of self sacrifice. Ants keep slaves. I don't crush them, it's pointless, they outnumber humans tenfold by body mass. ~ Pega Rose

Pray look upon the plants and birds, the ants, spiders, and bees, and you will see them all exerting their nature, and busy in their station. Pray, shall not a man act like a man? ~ Marcus Aurelius

Walter looked about him lingeringly and lovingly. This spot had always been so dear to him. What fun they all had had here lang syne. Phantoms of memory seemed to pace the dappled paths and peep merrily through the swinging boughs–Jem and Jerry, bare-legged, sunburned schoolboys, fishing in the brook and frying trout over the old stone fireplace; Nan and Di and Faith, in their dimpled, fresh-eyed childish beauty; Una the sweet and shy, Carl, poring over ants and bugs, little slangy, sharp-tongued, good-hearted Mary Vance–the old Walter that had been himself lying on the grass reading poetry or wandering through palaces of fancy. They were all there around him–he could see them almost as plainly as he saw Rilla–as plainly as he had once seen the Pied Piper piping down the valley in a vanished twilight. And they said to him, those gay little ghosts of other days, "We were the children of yesterday, Walter–fight a good fight for the children of today and tomorrow. ~ L.M. Montgomery

And then I get up because it is the only thing I can do. I step out of the ditch and brush the ants off because it is the only thing I can do. I follow Randall around the house because it is the only thing I can do; if this is strength, if this is weakness, this is what I do. I hiccup, but tears still run down my face. After Mama died, Daddy said, What are you crying for? Stop crying. Crying ain't going to change anything. We never stopped crying. We just did it quieter. We hid it. I learned how to cry so that almost no tears leaked out of my eyes, so that I swallowed the hot salty water of them and felt them running down my throat. This was the only thing that we could do. I swallow and squint through the tears, and I run. ~ Jesmyn Ward

Have you ever seen an anthill?" he said at last. "A machine of tiny marchers. Too much motion, you cannot make out the aims in it. But take something away from that anthill – a stone, a leaf, a dead caterpillar – and the ants scurry. You see which ones you have sabotaged, which ones are disturbed and scuttling to prop something in its place. That is what I do. That is kleptomancy. Divination by theft. Find something that is important, something on which you suspect many plans rely, and remove it. Then sit and watch. That's why stealing you will help, even if you know nothing. Right now, the people who want to use you and the people who want you dead will be in a race to find you before the other does. People in a hurry often show their hand by mistake. ~ Frances Hardinge

Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us. We need hours of aimless wandering or spates of time sitting on park benches, observing the mysterious world of ants and the canopy of treetops. ~ Maya Angelou

The last time the Right Honourable Gentleman raised the accusation about the policies of this government forcing his constituents to resort to inedible foods - in that case, as I remember, it was ants, earwigs, and glowworms - the National Health looked very seriously into the matter, and their inspectors. . . ." "Division! Division!" cried out some who had got the scent of blood, and Mallet Scuffs himself, successfully diverted, cried out, "Weevils, too! Weevils and grubs!" "Their inspectors. . . ." "Weevils, too, weevils and grubs! Weevils, too, weevils and grubs!" chanted a Marxist anti-missile faction. ~ Mark Helprin

We have the right to rid our houses of ants; but what we have no right to do is to forget to honor the ant as God made it, out in the place where God made the ant to be. When we meet the ant on the sidewalk, we step over him. He is a creature, like ourselves; not made in the image of God, it is true, but equal with man as far as creation is concerned. The ant and the man are both creatures. ~ Francis Schaeffer

[Footnote:] An Ant on a hot stove-lid runs faster than an Ant on a cold one. Who wouldn't? ~ Will Cuppy

When I was younger I used to see the earth as a fundamentally stable and serene place, possessed of a delicate, nearly divine balance, which humans had somehow managed to upset. But as I studied trails more closely, this fantasy gradually evaporated. I now see the earth as the collaborative artwork of trillions of sculptors, large and small. Sheep, humans, elephants, ants: each of us alters the world in our passage. When we build hives or nests, mud huts or concrete towers, we re-sculpt the contours of the planet. When we eat, we convert living matter into waste. And when we walk, we create trails. The question we must ask ourselves is not whether we should shape the earth, but how. ~ Robert Moor

Gossips are like ants" she caressed his head "the moment you spot one, there are already many anthills around but don't look for them because if you do, you'll find them and they in turn would bite you and cause you pain, and pain would cause you to lose focus. ~ S.A. David

You know what, my new mantra is this: ANT AND DEC. Ant and Dec. I might get their names tattooed on each wrist. Because they smile, and they never complain, and it seems to work for them and I wish I could be more like that. ~ Lily Allen

There are times the lies get to me, times I weary of battering myself against the obstacles of denial, hatred, fear-induced stupidity, and greed, times I want to curl up and fall into the problem, let it sweep me away as it so obviously sweeps away so many others. I remember a spring day a few years ago, a spring day much like this one, only a little more sun, and warmer. I sat on this same couch and looked out this same window at the same ponderosa pine.
I was frightened, and lonely. Frightened of a future that looks dark, and darker with each passing species, and lonely because for every person actively trying to shut down the timber industry, stop abuse, or otherwise bring about a sustainable and sane way of living, there are thousands who are helping along this not-so-slow train to oblivion. I began to cry.
The tears stopped soon enough. I realized we are not so outnumbered. We are not outnumbered at all. I looked closely, and saw one blade of wild grass, and another. I saw the sun reflecting bright off the needles of pine trees, and I heard the hum of flies. I saw ants walking single file through the dust, and a spider crawling toward the corner of the ceiling. I knew in that moment, as I've known ever since, that it is no longer possible to be lonely, that every creature on earth is pulling in the direction of life--every grasshopper, every struggling salmon, every unhatched chick, every cell of every blue whale--and it is only our own fear that sets us apart. ~ Derrick Jensen

Ants in the house seem to be, not intruders, but the owners. ~ Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

I suppressed my fury at his verbal probings
As he attempted entry
Of my inner self. My anger was
A thing he wanted too much
As if it pleasured him, his touch
Sent ants marauding
Beneath my teenage skin.
My instincts clawed me back
From the precipice of him;
His vile dark eyes accompanied his oh,
Too personal breath upon my face
As he studied my reaction to his question,
As if to say 'I'm a man
And I am touching you, I am, I am.'
My momentary sorrow taught me
That in future visits I'd present
A show of mediocrity.
I'd be blank, without a trait,
Devoid of personality
For him to finger and manipulate. ~ Frieda Hughes

Late Echo"

Alone with our madness and favorite flower
We see that there really is nothing left to write about.
Or rather, it is necessary to write about the same old things
In the same way, repeating the same things over and over
For love to continue and be gradually different.

Beehives and ants have to be re-examined eternally
And the color of the day put in
Hundreds of times and varied from summer to winter
For it to get slowed down to the pace of an authentic
Saraband and huddle there, alive and resting.

Only then can the chronic inattention
Of our lives drape itself around us, conciliatory
And with one eye on those long tan plush shadows
That speak so deeply into our unprepared knowledge
Of ourselves, the talking engines of our day. ~ John Ashbery

If you want to nourish a bird, you should let it live any way it chooses. Creatures differ because they have different likes and dislikes. Therefore the sages never require the same ability from all creatures ... concepts of right should be founded on what is suitable. The true saint leaves wisdom to the ants, takes a cue from the fishes, and leaves willfulness to the sheep. ~ Zhuangzi

Not all ants use violence to dominate their world, some use more subtle methods. ~ E. O. Wilson

In the meantime the strike is over, with a remarkably low loss of life. All is quiet, they report, all is quiet.
In the deserted harbour there is yet water that laps against the quays. In the dark and silent forest there is a leaf that falls. Behind the polished panelling the white ant eats away the wood. Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools. ~ Alan Paton

Once a hunter met a lion near the hungry critter's lair,
and the way that lion mauled him was decidedly unfair;
but the hunter never whimpered when the surgeons, with their thread,
sewed up forty-seven gashes in his mutilated head;
and he showed the scars in triumph, and they gave him pleasant fame,
and he always blessed the lion that had camped upon his frame.
Once that hunter, absent minded, sat upon a hill of ants,
and about a million bit him, and you should have seen him dance!
And he used up lots of language of a deep magenta tint,
and apostrophized the insects in a style unfit to print.
And it's thus with worldly troubles;
when the big ones come along, we serenely go to meet them, feeling valiant, bold and strong, but the weary little worries with their poisoned stings and smarts, put the lid upon our courage, make us gray, and break our hearts. ~ Walt Mason

Ever since he'd given up money, certain people had called him a freeloader, a parasite. (As one comment-thread malapropist put it: "Do you Believe you are smooching off others?") They demanded to know what he was giving back. To which Suelo asked, Who says you need to give something back? What does a raven give? What does a barnacle give, or a coyote? In his view, every living thing gave plenty, merely by existing. But from a strictly materialistic view, his critics had an excellent point. A raven contributes nothing, except of course his own corpse, which will feed some other being. Now Suelo was dying, and he offered his body to the ravens, the coyotes, the ringtails, the mice, the ants. ~ Mark Sundeen

In his 1973 "literary investigation," The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn exposed the practices of the Soviet penal system: "If the intellectuals in the plays of Chekhov who spent all their time guessing what would happen in twenty, thirty or forty years had been told that in forty years interrogation by torture would be practiced in Russia; that prisoners would have their skulls squeezed within iron rings, that a human being would be lowered into an acid bath; that they would be trussed up naked to be bitten by ants and bedbugs; that a ramrod heated over a primus stove would be thrust up their anal canal (the 'secret brand'); that a man's genitals would be slowly crushed beneath the toe of a jackboot; and that, in the luckiest possible circumstances, prisoners would be tortured by being kept from sleeping for a week, by thirst, and by being beaten to a bloody pulp, not one of Chekhov's plays would have gotten to its end because all the heroes would have gone off to insane asylums. ~ Donnie Eichar

The country of the tourist pamphlet always is another country, an embarrassing abstraction of the desirable that, thank God, does not exist on this planet, where there are always ants and bad smells and empty Coca-Cola bottles to keep the grubby finger-print of reality upon the beautiful. ~ Nadine Gordimer

Capitalism is not a human being. Capitalism is a Moloch, a god, a god of bloody sacrifice that sees human beings as ants ~ Terence McKenna

On this side of the wall is our house; in our backyard there is nothing. Nothing but red dust and round-headed black ants streaming and one juicy banana trunk stabbed brown--jab jab jab--never dead. I am always looking over the wall for Tissa. ~ Romesh Gunesekera

Lavender's my favorite scent, after White-Out and bacon rind. I sat down on the steps, not sure where to go next.
A July afternoon yawned.
Mirage puddles'd shimmered on the Welland road as I rode here.
I could've gone to sleep on the baked doorstep.
Little naked ants. ~ David Mitchell

When the mind swings by a grass-blade
an ant's forefoot shall save you ~ Ezra Pound

One interesting side-effect of the fire in Ankh-Morpork concerns the inn-sewer-ants policy, which left the city through the ravaged roof of the Broken Drum, was wafted high into the discworld's atmosphere on the ensuing thermal, and came to earth several days and a few thousand miles away on an uloruaha bush in the beTrobi islands. The simple, laughing islanders subsequently worshipped it as a god, much to the amusement of their more sophisticated neighbours. Strangely enough the rainfall and harvests in the next few years were almost supernaturally abundant, and this led to a research team being despatched to the islands by the Minor Religions faculty of Unseen University. Their verdict was that it only went to show. * ~ Terry Pratchett

But why should I care what he's doing if I'm crazy about you?'
'We are allowed to have more than one feeling at once,' said Kenneth. 'We are human beings, not ants. ~ Jami Attenberg

Ants are driven by fear. ~ Lauren Oliver

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits. ~ Lewis Thomas

How do we know that the creation of worlds is not determined by the fall of grains of sand? Who knows the reciprocal ebb and flow of the infinitely great and the infinitely little, the reverberations of causes in the precipices of being, and the avalanches of creation? The tiniest worm is of importance; the great is little, the little is great; everything is balanced in necessity; alarming vision for the mind. There are marvelous relations between beings and things; in that inexhaustible whole, from the sun to the grub, nothing despise the other; all have need of each other. The light does not bear away terrestrial perfumes into the azure depths, without knowing what it is doing; the night distributes stellar essences to the sleeping flowers. All birds that fly have round their the thread of the infinite. Germination is complicated with the bursting forth of a meteor and with the peck of a swallow cracking its egg, and it places on one level the birth of an earthworm and the advent of Socrates. Where telescopes end, the microscopes begin. Which of the two possesses the larger field of vision? Choose. A bit of mould is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an ant hill of stars. ~ Victor Hugo

Sheep all together, cars all together, people all together, crows all together, ants all together! Everywhere is full of herds! To breath comfortably, to feel free, to think better and to find the beauties of the unknown paths leave your herd! In whichever herd you are in, leave it! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

I think you're asking too much. You know what I have? Toward this Pris android?"
"Empathy," he said.
"Something like that. Identification; there goes I. My god; maybe that's what'll happen. In the confusion you'll retire me, not her. And she can go back to Seattle and live my life. I never felt this way before. We are machines, stamped out like bottle caps. It's an illusion that I - I personally - really exist; I'm just representative of a type."
He could not help being amused; Rachael had become so mawkishly morose. "Ants don't feel like that," he said, "and they're physically identical."
"Ants. They don't feel period."
"Identical human twins. They don't - "
"But they identify with each other; I understand they have an empathic, special bond. ~ Philip K. Dick

It has become obligatory to fulfil a function which shall in some way be regarded as useful to the masses ... Even an articulated mass always tends to become unspiritual and inhuman. It is life without existence, superstition without faith. It may stamp all flat; it is disinclined to tolerate independence and greatness, but prone to constrain people to become as automatic as ants. ~ Karl Jaspers

Learn from the ants- how a tiny heart is big enough to love, help and care about another living existence. ~ Munia Khan

I was playing golf. I swung, missed the ball, and got a big chunk of dirt. I swung again, missed the ball, and got another big chunk of dirt. Just then, 2 ants climbed on the ball saying, "Let's get up here before we get killed!" ~ Henny Youngman

Kitchens always attract bugs because there are odors and crumbs. Even if you're clean as can be, bugs will be in your kitchen at some point whether they are ants, beetles, or even cockroaches. ~ Patty Korman

If you're not a race driver, stay the hell home. Don't come here and grumble about going too fast. Get the hell out of the race car if you've got feathers on your legs or butt. Put a kerosene rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat that candy ass. ~ Dale Earnhardt

When they had understood the hoopoe's words,
A clamour of complaint rose from the birds:
'Although we recognize you as our guide,
You must accept - it cannot be denied -
We are a wretched, flimsy crew at best,
And lack the bare essentials for this quest.
Our feathers and our wings, our bodies' strength
Are quite unequal to the journey's length;
For one of us to reach the Simorgh's throne
Would be miraculous, a thing unknown.
[...] He seems like Solomon, and we like ants;
How can mere ants climb from their darkened pit
Up to the Simorgh's realm? And is it fit
That beggars try the glory of a king?
How ever could they manage such a thing?'

The hoopoe answered them: 'How can love thrive
in hearts impoverished and half alive?
"Beggars," you say - such niggling poverty
Will not encourage truth or charity.
A man whose eyes love opens risks his soul -
His dancing breaks beyond the mind's control.
[...] Your heart is not a mirror bright and clear
If there the Simorgh's form does not appear;
No one can bear His beauty face to face,
And for this reason, of His perfect grace,
He makes a mirror in our hearts - look there
To see Him, search your hearts with anxious care. ~ Attar Of Nishapur

Be more than man, or thou'rt less than an ant. ~ John Donne

They lost their sense of reality, the notion of time, the rhythm of daily habits. They closed the doors and windows again so as not to waste time getting undressed and they walked about the house as Remedios the Beauty had wanted to do and they would roll around naked in the mud of the courtyard, and one afternoon they almost drowned as they made love in the cistern. In a short time they did more damage than the red ants: they destroyed the furniture in the parlor, in their madness they tore to shreds the hammock that had resisted the sad bivouac loves of Colonel Aureliano Buendía and they disemboweled the mattresses and emptied them on the floor as they suffocated in storms of cotton. Although Aureliano was just as ferocious a lover as his rival, it was Amaranta ?rsula who ruled in that paradise of disaster with her mad genius and her lyrical voracity, as if she had concentrated in her love the unconquerable energy that her great-great-grandmother had given to the making of little candy animals. And yet, while she was singing with pleasure and dying with laughter over her own inventions, Aureliano was becoming more and more absorbed and silent, for his passion was self-centered and burning. Nevertheless, they both reached such extremes of virtuosity that when they became exhausted from excitement, they would take advantage of their fatigue. They would give themselves over to the worship of their bodies, discovering that the rest periods of love had unexplored possibilities, ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

On the lawn next to the sidewalk a fire ant colony is swarming. The ants are pouring out of a mound nest, here no more than an irregular pile of dirt partly flattened by the last pass of a lawnmower. Winged queens and males are taking off on their nuptial flight, protected by angry-looking workers that run up and down the grass blades and out onto the blistering-hot concrete of the sidewalk. The species is unmistakably Solenopsis geminata, the native fire ant. ~ E. O. Wilson