Locusts Quotes

And yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered, because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Say you could view a time lapse film of our planet: what would you see?

Transparent images moving through light, "an infinite storm of beauty."
The beginning is swaddled in mists, blasted by random blinding flashes. Lava pours and cools; seas boil and flood. Clouds materialize and shift; now you can see the earth's face through only random patches of clarity. The land shudders and splits, like pack ice rent by widening lead. Mountains burst up, jutting, and dull and soften before your eyes, clothed in forests like felt. The ice rolls up, grinding green land under water forever; the ice rolls back. Forests erupt and disappear like fairy rings. The ice rolls up- mountains are mowed into lakes, land rises wet from the sea like a surfacing whale- the ice rolls back.

A blue-green streaks the highest ridges, a yellow-green spreads from the south like a wave up a strand. A red dye seems to leak from the north down the ridges and into the valleys, seeping south; a white follows the red, then yellow-green washes north, then red spreads again, then white, over and over, making patterns of color too intricate to follow. Slow the film. You see dust storms, locusts, floods, in dizzying flash-frames.

Zero in on a well-watered shore and see smoke from fires drifting. Stone cities rise, spread, and crumble, like paths of alpine blossoms that flourish for a day an inch above the permafrost, that iced earth no root can suck, and wither in a hour. New cit ~ Annie Dillard

Rain they take as a personal affront, shaking their heads and commiserating with each other in the cafés, looking with profound suspicion at the sky as though a plague of locusts is about to descend, and picking their way with distaste through the puddles on the pavement. ~ Peter Mayle

When Communism fell in 1989, the temptation for Western commentators to gloat triumphantly proved irresistible. This, it was declared, marked the end of History. Henceforth, the world belonged to liberal capitalism – there was no alternative – and we would all march forward in unison towards a future shaped by peace, democracy and free markets. Twenty years on this assertion looks threadbare.

There can be no question that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the domino-like collapse of Communism states from the suburbs of Vienna to the shores of the Pacific marked a very significant transition: one in which millions of men and women were liberated from a dismal and defunct ideology and its authoritarian institutions. But no one could credibly assert that what replaced Communism was an era of idyllic tranquility. There was no peace in post-Communist Yugoslavia, and precious little democracy in any of the successor states of the Soviet Union.

As for free markets, they surely flourished, but it is not clear for whom. The West – Europe and the United States above all – missed a once-in-a-century opportunity to re-shape the world around agreed and improved international institutions and practices. Instead, we sat back and congratulated ourselves upon having won the Cold War: a sure way to lose the peace. The years from 1989 to 2009 were consumed by locusts. ~ Tony Judt

A township where one primitive forest waves above, while another primitive forest rots below, - such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a soil grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness comes the Reformer eating locusts and wild honey. ~ Henry David Thoreau

There are people who eat the earth and eat all the people on it like in the Bible with the locusts. And other people who stand around and watch them eat. ~ Lillian Hellman

It's not till she's outside that she realizes what she was looking for in there. What she's been looking for all these years. What she realizes now she no longer needs.
Permission.
I am the locusts, Ella sends the thought out like a concussive wave, so that it hits every surveillance orb in the neighborhood, every wired cop, every crabtank in the nearby precinct. I am the locusts and the frogs and the rivers of blood.
I'm here now. ~ Tochi Onyebuchi

hipsters and entrepreneurs were complicated locusts. they ate up everything in sight, but they meant well. ~ Walidah Imarisha

We must be quite a sight. A cloud of scorpion-tailed, man-sized locusts blotting out the sky. And in the middle of it all, a demon with enormous wings carrying a teenage girl. At least, Raffe must look like a demon to anyone who didn't know he was an archangel flying on borrowed wings. They probably think he kidnapped the girl he's holding. They couldn't possibly guess that I feel safe in his arms. That I'm resting my head on the warm curve of his neck because I like the feel of his skin. ~ Susan Ee

Disease, a simple famine, plagues of locusts everywhere, or a cataclysmic earthquake, I'd accept with some despair, but no, you sent us Congress! Good God, Sir, was that fair? ~ John Adams

The thing that seemed like silence must have been the endless cry of all the crickets and locusts in the world, rising and falling.
("The Wide Net") ~ Eudora Welty

The rockets set the bony meadows afire, turned rock to lava, turned wood to charcoal, transmuted water to steam, made sand and silica into green glass which lay like shattered mirrors reflecting the invasion, all about. The rockets came like drums, beating in the night. The rockets came like locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke. ~ Ray Bradbury

Passover is my idea of a perfect holiday. Dear God, when you're handing out plagues of darkness, locusts, hail, boils, flies, lice, frogs, and cattle murrain, and turning the Nile to blood and smiting the firstborn, give me a pass. And tell me when it's over. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

New York is where it is going to begin, I think. You can see it coming. The insect experts have learned how it works with locusts. Until locust population reaches a certain density, they all act like any grasshoppers. When the critical point is reached, they turn savage and swarm, and try to eat the world. We're nearing a critical point. One day soon two strangers will bump into each other at high noon in the middle of New York. But this time they won't snarl and go on. They will stop and stare and then leap at each others ~ John D. MacDonald

The weary August days are long;
The locusts sing a plaintive song,
The cattle miss their master's call
When they see the sunset shadows fall. ~ Edmund Clarence Stedman

He was furious. He wouldn't let me bury them. It didn't matter. There was no way to dig up the deckplates. He dried up the snow. He brought the night. He roared and sent locusts. It didn't do a thing; they stayed dead. I'd had him. ~ Harlan Ellison

The Egyptians had the locusts and in the Middle Ages there was the Black Death with the rats, but tourists are the plague of our century and we'll not survive this one. ~ Richard Conniff

I am thinking of a sky filled with spaceships, so many of them that they seem like a plague of locusts, silver against the luminous mauve of the night. ~ Neil Gaiman

I don't care what is written," Meyer Landsman says. "I don't care what supposedly got promised to some sandal-wearing idiot whose claim to fame is that he was ready to cut his own son's throat for the sake of a hare-brained idea. I don't care about red heifers and patriarchs and locusts. A bunch of old bones in the sand. My homeland is in my hat. It's in my ex-wife's tote bag. ~ Michael Chabon

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter - the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something.
... Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. ~ E.B. White

He figured somewhere in these territories there was an enormous madhouse whose keeper had thrown up his hands in disgusted defeat and flung wide the portals so these twisted folk could descend like locusts on the countryside. ~ William Gay

Images surround us; cavorting broadcast in the minds of others, we wear the motley tailored by their bad digestions, the shame and failure, plague pandemics and private indecencies, unpaid bills, and animal ecstasies remembered in hospital beds, our worst deeds and best intentions will not stay still, scolding, mocking, or merely chattering they assail each other, shocked at recognition. Sometimes simplicity serves, though even the static image of Saint John Baptist received prenatal attentions (six months along, leaping for joy in his mother's womb when she met Mary who had conceived the day before): once delivered he stands steady in a camel's hair loincloth at a ford in the river, morose, ascetic on locusts and honey, molesting passers-by, upbraiding the flesh on those who wear it with pleasure. And the Nazarene whom he baptized? Three years pass, in a humility past understanding: and then death, disappointed? unsuspecting? and the body left on earth, the one which was to rule the twelve tribes of Israel, and on earth, left crying out - My God, why dost thou shame me? Hopelessly ascendent in resurrection, the image is pegged on the wind by an epileptic tentmaker, his strong hands stretch the canvas of faith into a gaudy caravanserai, shelter for travelers wearied of the burning sand, lured by forgetfulness striped crimson and gold, triple-tiered, visible from afar, redolent of the east, and level and wide the sun crashes the fist of reality into that desert where the truth ~ William Gaddis

The white man has settled like a locust over Africa, and, like the locusts in early morning, cannot take flight for the heaviness of the dew on their wings. But the dew that weights the white man is the money that he makes from our labor. ~ Doris Lessing

In the evening, the summer haze hovers over the fields like a translucent amber blanket waiting to put the crops to bed, tucking them in sweetly before the chill of the night descends over all. The locusts buzz in the distance and the mosquitoes gather around the porch lights as we play cards and sip lemonade. It's muggy, but a comfortable kind of humid, like natures hug on your sun-kissed skin. ~ Sky Ashton

She liked the way this road smelled in the evenings, like rain falling on night-blooming jasmine. Locusts sang old songs in the darkness. ~ Lauren Kate

Like most things in life, there's also a spiritual side to my beard. Look at John the Baptist, one of the most important people in the New Testament. According to Matthew 3:4, "John's clothes were made of camel's hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey." He baptized Jesus, who was God in human body, despite his appearance being that of a deranged vagrant. When I try to visualize John the Baptist, I see a bearded hunter who had to have some sort of weaponry to function in the wild. I would also assume he dipped the locusts in wild honey before he ate them. Based on what I read in the Bible about John the Baptist, I actually tried to eat a locust once, but it tasted terrible, which gave me the idea that John the Baptist probably dipped them in honey first. Then again, almost everything tastes good with honey. ~ Jase Robertson

It's okay to spin around and around in the same place. Just so long as you're singing your heart out.
THAT's what life's all about. ~ Chica Umino

see who got caught. They have three grown children and enough grandchildren to keep them young. When she's not writing, Carolyn likes to sit in her gorgeous backyard with her cats, Chester Fat Boy and Boots Randolph Terminator Outlaw, and watch them protect their territory from crickets, locusts, and spiders. ~ Carolyn Brown

I will restore to you the years the locusts have eaten. ~ Florence Scovel Shinn

Earth can be bad for your health too. On land, grizzly bears want to maul you; in the oceans, sharks want to eat you. Snowdrifts can freeze you, deserts dehydrate you, earthquakes bury you, volcanoes incinerate you. Viruses can infect you, parasites suck your vital fluids, cancers take over your body, congenital diseases force an early death. And even if you have the good luck to be healthy, a swarm of locusts could devour your crops, a tsunami could wash away your family, or a hurricane could blow apart your town.
So the universe wants to kill us all. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

It is reported from the famous worshiper Rabi'ah al-Adawiyya (radiAllahu anha) that she said: "I have never heard the adhaan except that I remember the caller who will announce the Day of Resurrection, and I never see the falling snow except that I imagine the flying pages of the records of peoples deeds (on that day), and I never see swarms of locusts except that I think about the Great Gathering on the Last Day." ~ Rabia Basri

What
would be labeled as the casting of spells-such as sending a plague of locusts-when done by an outsider, is considered a miracle from God when accomplished by an insider. One problem with the "us and them" worldview is that it frequently condemns the behavior of outsiders and glorifies that of insiders, even when the behavior is exactly the same.
One ~ Joyce Higginbotham

Still, as a kid, History Repeats Itself terrified me, mostly because I was a God-fearing child. And I mean that literally. God scared me stiff, what with the turning human beings into salt and getting them swallowed up by whales, plus the locusts and famines and, not least, making sure his own kid gets nailed to death onto wood. Every time someone would die - a cousin or grandparent or Elvis - some relative preacher would there-there it away by saying that God has a plan, and we simply have no way of knowing what that plan is. But we did know. We learned about His plan every week at Sunday school. It's called Armageddon! ~ Sarah Vowell

And then instead of going on to Arusha they turned left,
he evidently figured that they had the gas, and looking down
he saw a pink sifting cloud, moving over the ground, and in
the air, like the first snow in a blizzard, that comes from
nowhere, and he knew the locusts were coming up from the
South. Then they began to climb and they were going to the
East it seemed, and then it darkened and they were in a
storm, the rain so thick it seemed like flying through a water-
fall, and then they were out and Compie turned his head and
grinned and pointed and there, ahead, all he could see, as
wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white
in the sun, was the square top of Kilimanjaro ~ Ernest Hemingway

As I stepped to the stage to pick up my degree, and the locusts sang off in the distance. ~ Bob Dylan

Teenagers travel in droves, packs, swarms ... To the librarian, they're a gaggle of geese. To the cook, they're a scourge of locusts. To department stores, they're a big beautiful exaltation of larks ... all lovely and loose and jingly. ~ Bernice Fitz-Gibbon

To aid and abet in the destruction of a single species or in the extermination of a single tribe is to commit a crime against God, a mortal sin against Mother Nature. Better by far to sacrifice in some degree the interests of mechanical civilization, curtail our gluttonous appetite for things, ever more things, learn to moderate our needs, and most important, and not difficult, learn to control, limit and gradually reduce our human numbers. We humans swarm over the planet like a plague of locusts, multiplying and devouring. There is no justice, sense or decency in this mindless global breeding spree, this obscene anthropoid fecundity, this industrialized mass production of babies and bodies, ever more bodies and babies. The man-centered view of the world in anti-Christian, anti-Buddhist, antinature, antilife, and
antihuman. ~ Edward Abbey

So that's how it was. Palaces, kings... and thugs like that, who, like locusts, move from one century to another. ~ Lina J. Potter

The first days of war were the first days of disgrace. After a series of partial catastrophes, in the spring of 1915 came the general retreat. The generals took out their own criminal incapacity on the peaceful population. Enormous tracts of land were violently laid waste. Clouds of human locusts were driven to the rear with whips. The external rout was completed with an internal one. ~ Leon Trotsky

We may be well on our way to a society overrun by hordes of lawyers, hungry as locusts, and brigades of judges in numbers never before contemplated. ~ Warren E. Burger

Things were alive. Life buzzed between each shade of green, from dark pines and supple ferns to lime green moss growing on a huge, dry gray rock. Honey locusts and ginkgos aflare in yellows. What was cowardly about the color yellow? Nothing ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Australia has suffered a decade of drought, epic floods, a Category 5 cyclone, and a plague of locusts. But just because Aussies have the biggest carbon footprint in the world, it doesn't mean they're stupid. ~ Jeff Goodell

In appearance the locusts were like horses equipped for battle. On their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces, 8 their hair like women's hair, and their teeth like lions' teeth; ~ Anonymous

How many men
Have spent their blood in their dear country's service,
Yet now pine under want; while selfish slaves,
That even would cut their throats whom now they fawn on,
Like deadly locusts, eat the honey up,
Which those industrious bees so hardly toil'd for. ~ Thomas Otway

I know, I know, but here beside the water
while the locusts chitter and sparkle,
although they are waiting, I want to wait for myself.
I too want to watch myself.
I want to discover at last my own feelings.
And when I reach the place where I am waiting,
I expect to fall asleep, dying of laughter. ~ Pablo Neruda

Invite politicians to dinner and let them tell the world how delicious it is ... They will proudly go around and say, 'I ate crickets, I ate locusts, and they were delicious.' ~ Kofi Annan

Lillian Hellman wrote a play called The Little Foxes. In it a young girl tells her mother that some people eat the earth, like locusts, and others stand around and watch them do it. ~ Sylvain Reynard

We are familiar with people who seek out solitude: penitents, failures, saints, or prophets. They retreat to deserts, preferably, where they live on locusts and honey. Others, however, live in caves or cells on remote islands; some-more spectacularly-squat in cages mounted high atop poles swaying in the breeze. They do this to be nearer God. Their solitude is a self-moritification by which they do penance. They act in the belief that they are living a life pleasing to God. Or they wait months, years, for their solitude to be broken by some divine message that they hope then speedily to broadcast among mankind. ~ Patrick Suskind

The effect of the weather on the inhabitants of Provence is immediate and obvious. They expect every day to be sunny, and their disposition suffers when it isn't. Rain they take as a personal affront, shaking their heads and commiserating with each other in the cafes, looking with profound suspicion at the sky as though a plague of locusts is about to descend, and picking their way with distaste through the puddles on the pavement. If anything worse than a rainy day should come along, such as this sub-zero snap, the result is startling: most the population disappears... But what did everyone else do? The earth was frozen, the vines were clipped and dormant, it was too cold to hunt. Had they all gone on holiday?...It was a puzzle, until we realized how many of the local people had their birthdays in September or October, and then a possible but unverifiable answer suggested itself: they were busy indoors making babies. There is a season for everything in Provence, and the first two months of the year must be devoted to procreation. We have never dared to ask. ~ Peter Mayle

John wore clothes made of hair from camels. He had a leather belt around him. His food was locusts and wild honey. 7 ~ Anonymous

A street turned off at right angles, descending, and became a dirt road. On either hand the land dropped more sharply; a broad flat dotted with small cabins whose weathered roofs were on a level with the crown of the road. They were set in small grassless plots littered with broken things, bricks, planks, crockery, things of a once utilitarian value. What growth there was consisted of rank weeds and the trees were mulberries and locusts and sycamores
trees that partook also of the foul desiccation which surrounded the houses; trees whose very burgeoning seemed to be the sad and stubborn remnant of September, as if even spring had passed them by, leaving them to feed upon the rich and unmistakable smell of negroes in which they grew. ~ William Faulkner

The Great Mother aborts children, and is the dead fetus; breeds pestilence, and is the plague; she makes of the skull something gruesomely compelling, and is all skulls herself. To unveil her is to risk madness, to gaze over the abyss, to lose the way, to remember the repressed trauma. She is the molestor of children, the golem, the bogey-man, the monster in the swamp, the rotting cadaverous zombie who threatens the living. She is progenitor of the devil, the "strange son of chaos." She is the serpent, and Eve, the temptress; she is the femme fatale, the insect in the ointment, the hidden cancer, the chronic sickness, the plague of locusts, the cause of drought, the poisoned water. She uses erotic pleasure as bait to keep the world alive and breeding; she is a gothic monster, who feeds on the blood of the living. ~ Jordan B. Peterson

This time she wasn't up the stump, as she spoke of it. Eventually she was able to give Frazer better news. But she made him wait for it. She wanted him to worry, or to give him practice in learning to worry about her and not about himself. She was not easy toward him. She knew it was unequal, that she loved him more than he could her or anyone. But neither was love his calling, as it was hers. And she was very severe and exalted about this. She too could have lived in desert wilderness for the sake of it, and have eaten locusts. ~ Saul Bellow

The severe frost last February destroyed many branches as well as young trees that had already been full of sap as a result of the warm weather. In addition to this punishment by God, there is another one, namely, an unbelievable number of caterpillar-type worms which do very great damage to our wheat, barley, and oats. They also eat down to the ground the Indian corn sprouts and whatever young plants we have in our gardens. It would be even worse except for the birds, particularly the starlings, which fly over the fields in large numbers and eat the worms. . . .

Last month the unusually large number of worms threatened to ruin our crops completely, but it pleased God (for, according to the Second Book of Chronicles 7:13, He commands the locusts to devour the land and, according to Verse 14, He promises to heal it) that a large number of starlings and other small birds came to the fields and gradually ate all the worms. Thanks be to God for His merciful regime! ~ Johann Martin Boltzius

Raffe throws me a dirty look. He bends over and swipes his arm behind my knees, lifting me up in his embrace.
'I can go with one of the locusts.' I stiffen in his arms and try to lean as far away from him as I can.
'The hell you will.' He runs a couple of steps before spreading his wings. ~ Susan Ee

They give me the evil eye every Sunday. In Church. It's like they expect the altar to melt or a million locusts to fly out of my butt. ~ Kirsten Miller

A figure appears between me and the oncoming Inquisitor, moving with deadly grace. It's a boy, I think. Who is this? This boy is not an illusion - I can sense his reality, the solidity of his figure that the black sky and the locusts don't have. He is clad in a whirlwind of hooded blue robes, and a metallic silver mask covers his entire face. He crouches in front of me, every line of his body tense, his focus entirely on the Inquisitor. A long dagger gleams in each of his gloved hands. ~ Marie Lu

Even the locusts are afraid of my mother. ~ Susan Ee

After a while he became disagreeably affected by the sight of the roadway thronged with vehicles and of the pavement crowded with men and women. He was in a long, straight street, peopled by a mere fraction of an immense multitude; but all round him, on and on, even to the limits of the horizon hidden by the enormous piles of bricks, he felt the mass of mankind mighty in its numbers. They swarmed numerous like locusts, industrious like ants, thoughtless like a natural force, pushing on blind and orderly and absorbed, impervious to sentiment, to logic, to terror, too, perhaps.
That was the form of doubt he feared most. Impervious to fear! Often while walking abroad, when he happened also to come out of himself, he had such moments of dreadful and sane mistrust of mankind. What if nothing could move them ? Such moments come to all men whose ambition aims at a direct grasp upon humanity -- to artists, politicians, thinkers, reformers, or saints. A despicable emotional state this, against which solitude fortifies a superior character. ~ Joseph Conrad

Throw the word "bargain" around a few times, and people will swarm the tiredest old dreck like bees in search of a new hive. Or maybe locusts, ready to strip the place bare. They even buzzed like swarming insects. Voices raised in conversation and laughter, plus the occasional shrieks of a tired child, formed a background roar that still failed to drown out the tired tinkle of Christmas music piped over the top. I'd only been here ten minutes and already I'd heard White Christmas twice. Two times too many in my book. ~ Marina Finlayson

I understand and sympathize with the reasonable needs of a reasonable number of people on a finite continent. All life depends upon other life. But what is happening today, in North America, is not rational use but irrational massacre. Man the Pest, multiplied to the swarming stage, is attacking the remaining forests like a plague of locusts on a field of grain. ~ Edward Abbey

I read it as if it had been written by someone else, although it was my own experience being recounted.

The endless questioning finally ended. My psychiatrist looked at me, there was no uncertainty in his voice. "Maniac-depressive illness." I admired his bluntness. I wished him locusts in his land and a pox upon his house. Silent, unbelievable rage. I smiled pleasantly. He smiled back. The war had just begun, ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

The English play hockey in any weather. Thunder, lightening, plague of locusts ... nothing can stop the hockey. Do not fight the hockey, for the hockey will win. ~ Maureen Johnson

From the great trees the locusts cry
In quavering ecstatic duo-a boy
Shouts a wild call-a mourning dove
In the blue distance sobs-the wind
Wanders by, heavy with odors
Of corn and wheat and melon vines;
The trees tremble with delirious joy as the breeze
Greets them, one by one-now the oak
Now the great sycamore, now the elm. ~ Hamlin Garland

Barbarian Horde
This will be lot and lots of wild-screaming people advancing under a cloud of dust in order to devestate more civilized parts. They are a bit like locusts, except that they kill people direcly. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

The Government simply cannot make up their mind or they cannot get the prime minister to make up his mind. So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful for impotency. And so we go on preparing more months more years precious perhaps vital for the greatness of Britain for the locusts to eat. - Speaking in the Address in Reply debate, after giving some specific instances of Germany's war preparedness ~ Winston S. Churchill

Stirred with passion, laced with fun, spiked with laughter & served with a smile. On the road. No sugar, no milk. Horn OK Please. Buy my books or may the wrath of a thousand locusts infest your underpants *Smack!!* :-) ~ Kartik Iyengar