Moth Quotes

For though my rhyme be ragged,
Tattered and jagged,
Rudely rain-beaten,
Rusty and moth-eaten,
If ye take well therewith,
It hath in it some pith. ~ John Skelton

…The heavens could not bear my debt
And wrote me as a madman in my fate.
But lovers bled their hearts
And on the face of the Beloved
Did a beauty spot create.

The fire that burns
In the flame of the lamp
Is not the fire;
It burns in the essence of
The moth and consumes him entire… ~ Hafiz Shirazi

Then Freddie was transformed into a moth. His old empty body fell forward face first into the water with a splash. Slicked back hair tied in a ponytail floated on the surface of the pool like a dead rodent on the sea as Freddie fluttered up towards a nearby streetlamp. ~ Stephen Livingston

Young man, be of good courage. Care not for what the world says or thinks: you will not be with the world always. Can man save your soul? No. Will man be your judge in the great and dreadful day of account? No. Can man give you a good conscience in life, a good hope in death, a good answer in the morning of resurrection? No! no! no! Man can do nothing of the sort. Then "fear not the reproach of men, neither be afraid of their revilings: for the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool" (Isa. 51:7,8). Call to your mind the saying of good Colonel Gardiner: "I fear God, and therefore I have none else to fear." Go and be like him. ~ J.C. Ryle

Focus your attention upon yourselves. Do not focus your attention upon other things - that is, what you have cast away from yourselves. Do not return to eat what you have vomited. Do not be moth-eaten, do not be worm-eaten, for you have already gotten rid of that. Do not be a place for the devil, for you have already destroyed him. Do not strengthen what stands in your way, what is collapsing, to support it. One who is lawless is nothing. Treat the lawless one more harshly than the just one, for the lawless does what he does because he is lawless, but the just does what he does with people because he is righteous. Do the Father's will, then, for you are from him. ~ Marvin W. Meyer

Together - like a moth to a flame, there'd be nothing left. ~ Chloe Neill

Even if everybody is looking at the same light bulb, the unique composition of an individual will dictate how they interpret and see things. Some people will only see things with their left eye (mind/moon), while others will use only their right (heart/sun). Some people are completely void of light and repel it immediately. For instance, a beetle will chase after an opening of light, while a cockroach will scatter at a crack of it. How are we different than the insects? Nobody is purely good or purely evil. Most of us are in-between. There are moths that explore the day and butterflies that play at night. Polarity is an integral part of nature - human or not human. ~ Suzy Kassem

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

A man killing himself in the pursuit of his dreams is no different in a moth flying into a flame. ~ Katherine Pine

Royce saw to his horse's needs; then, finding a suitable place, he unrolled his blanket and lay down.

"I take it we're camping here, then?"

Royce said nothing, still refusing to acknowledge his existence.

"You could have said, 'We're going to bed down here for the rest of the night.' No, wait, you're right, too much. How about 'sleeping here'? Two words. Even you could manage that, right? I mean, I know you can talk. You had plenty to say back in Arcadius's office. Couldn't keep the words from coming out then, but no, utterly impossible to indicate in any way that we'll be stopping here for the night."

Hadrian dismounted and began unloading Dancer. "How long were we on the road?" He paused to look up at the moon. "What? Five, six hours? Not a damn word. Getting chilly out, don't you think, Hadrian? Moon looks like a fingernail, ain't that right, Hadrian? That tree looks like a goddamn bear, don't it, Hadrian? Nothing. By the way, in case you hadn't noticed, I was attacked by a goshawk and a pig-riding dwarf that shot eggs at me with a sling. I was knocked from my horse and wrestled with the dwarf, the hawk, and the pig for what had to be half an hour. The dwarf kept smashing eggs in my face, and that ruddy pig pinned me down, licking them off. I only got away because the dwarf ran out of eggs. Then the hawk turned into a moth that became distracted by the light of the moon."
Royce shifted to his side, hood up.

"Yeah, ~ Michael J. Sullivan

They waited for the elevator. " Most people love butterflies and hate moth," he said. "But moths are more interesting - more engaging."
"They're destructive."
"Some are, a lot are, but they live in all kinds of ways. Just like we do." Silence for one floor.
"There's a moth, more than one in fact, that lives only on tears," he offered. "That's all they eat or drink."
"What kind of tears? Whose tears?"
"The tears of large land mammals, about our size.
The old definition of moth was, 'anything that gradually, silently eats, consumes, or wages any other thing.'
It was a verb for destruction too ... ~ Thomas Harris

i am dead but i know the dead are not like this."

the dead can sleep
they don't get up and rage
they don't have a wife.

her white face
like a flower in a closed window lifts up and
looks at me.

the curtain smokes a cigarette
and a moth dies in a
freeway cash
as I examine the shadows of my
hands.

an owl, the size of a baby clock
rings for me, come on come on
it says as Jerusalem is hustled
down crotch-stained halls.

the 5 a.m. grass is nasal now
in hums of battleships and valleys
in the raped light that brings on
the fascist birds.

I put out the lamp and get in bed
beside her, she thinks I'm there
mumbles a rosy gratitude
as I stretch my legs
to coffin length
get in and swim away
from frogs and fortunes. ~ Charles Bukowski

How, like a moth, the simple maid Still plays around the flame! ~ John Gay

Into the mercy seat I climb My head is shaved, my head is wired And like a moth that tries To enter the bright eye I go shuffling out of life Just to hide in death awhile And anyway I never lied. ~ Nick Cave

representation
is vital
otherwise the butterfly
surrounded by a group of moths
unable to see itself
will keep trying to become the moth
- representation ~ Rupi Kaur

The Drunken Fisherman"

Wallowing in this bloody sty,
I cast for fish that pleased my eye
(Truly Jehovah's bow suspends
No pots of gold to weight its ends);
Only the blood-mouthed rainbow trout
Rose to my bait. They flopped about
My canvas creel until the moth
Corrupted its unstable cloth.

A calendar to tell the day;
A handkerchief to wave away
The gnats; a couch unstuffed with storm
Pouching a bottle in one arm;
A whiskey bottle full of worms;
And bedroom slacks: are these fit terms
To mete the worm whose molten rage
Boils in the belly of old age?

Once fishing was a rabbit's foot--
O wind blow cold, O wind blow hot,
Let suns stay in or suns step out:
Life danced a jig on the sperm-whale's spout--
The fisher's fluent and obscene
Catches kept his conscience clean.
Children, the raging memory drools
Over the glory of past pools.

Now the hot river, ebbing, hauls
Its bloody waters into holes;
A grain of sand inside my shoe
Mimics the moon that might undo
Man and Creation too; remorse,
Stinking, has puddled up its source;
Here tantrums thrash to a whale's rage.
This is the pot-hole of old age.

Is there no way to cast my hook
Out of this dynamited brook?
The Fisher's sons must cast about
When shallow waters peter out.
I will catch Christ with a greased worm,
And when ~ Robert Lowell

It's an amazing thing to watch a lizard fold a moth into its mouth, like a sword swallower who specialises in umbrellas. ~ Elizabeth McCracken

When hurtled into a crisis situation, all creatures great and small will fight for survival. But they live in a fight to be free. A vegetative life of status quo is not going to be enough. So what then to do with this freedom? Really the only thing one can do is go to the light, as our moth friends will do. The freedom to seek possibilities. Following the chain to its source, this is the basic reason that life itself will kill you, because life leads to freedom and freedom leads back to the incinerating light from where your life first came. ~ Tommy Walker

And when white moths were on the wing and moth-like stars were flickering out ~ W.B.Yeats

Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl. ~ Mary Oliver

Fear can make a moth seem the size of a bull elephant. ~ Stephen Richards

Being young is like
being a moth, or alive I
bet-possibly:
I am burning, if I am learning any-
thing these days, it is that

The flames you keep touching when you're young,
you keep right ahead on touching when you're older. ~ Will Walton

You could use a moth like that as a symbol in a novel, but it was trite, wasn't it? The old moth-to-the-flame image had been used and used again. It was the stuff of amateur poetry. And she, having so little experience crafting a story, would be the most in danger of falling into trite approaches. If she wrote a novel, it probably would be about her father. And the male Luna moth would haunt its pages. Everyone would recognize the work as that of a first novelist. "She wrote about herself through the lens of her father."
The really good novelists, Laura thought, put their fathers, and maybe their mothers too, deeper into the stories. Which, she suddenly thought, might redeem Melville just the littlest bit. ~ L.L. Barkat

WHISPERS OF LOVE
Lover whispers to my ear,
Better to be a prey than a hunter.
Make yourself My fool.
Stop trying to be the sun and become a speck!
Dwell at My door and be homeless.
Don't pretend to be a candle, be a moth,
so you may taste the savor of Life
and know the power hidden in serving. ~ Rumi

Now the Fox Moth 83 was by no means an aeroplane designed for passenger comfort. It only had enough room for two seats, a stretcher and the doctor. What's more, it was held together with little more than wood, cloth, string and wire. So they set off at top speed, which was about 80 miles an hour, in the old money; about a four-hour trip it was. ~ Bill Marsh

Towards dawn he awoke. O what sweet music! His soul was all dewy wet. Over his limbs in sleep pale cool waves of light had passed. He lay still, as if his soul lay amid cool waters, conscious of faint sweet music. His mind was waking slowly to a tremulous morning knowledge, a morning inspiration. A spirit filled him, pure as the purest water, sweet as dew, moving as music. But how faintly it was inbreathed, how passionlessly, as if the seraphim themselves were breathing upon him! His soul was waking slowly, fearing to awake wholly. It was that windless hour of dawn when madness wakes and strange plants open to the light and the moth flies forth silently. ~ James Joyce

I think I finally understand the saying like a moth to a flame. I'm the moth. My heart flutters like the paper thin wings. And he is the flame, incendiary, scorching my soul.
He inhales so heavily, like he's been holding his breath under water. He presses his lips against mine and tugs at my hair gently. My head falls back and my mouth falls open. His tongue, slick as silver, dances with mine.
I'm wrong. I'm not a moth. I'm Icarus and I've flown too close to the sun. ~ A.D. Evans

The curtain of the universe is moth-eaten, and through its holes we see nothing now but mask and ghost. ~ Emile M. Cioran

Bumblebees detect the polarization of sunlight, invisible to uninstrumented humans; put vipers sense infrared radiation and detect temperature differences of 0.01C at a distance of half a meter; many insects can see ultraviolet light; some African freshwater fish generate a static electric field around themselves and sense intruders by slight perturbations induced in the field; dogs, sharks, and cicadas detect sounds wholly inaudible to humans; ordinary scorpions have micro--seismometers on their legs so they can detect in darkness the footsteps of a small insect a meter away; water scorpions sense their depth by measuring the hydrostatic pressure; a nubile female silkworm moth releases ten billionths of a gram of sex attractant per second, and draws to her every male for miles around; dolphins, whales, and bats use a kind of sonar for precision echo-location.
The direction, range, and amplitude of sounds reflected by to echo-locating bats are systematically mapped onto adjacent areas of the bat brain. How does the bat perceive its echo-world? Carp and catfish have taste buds distributed over most of their bodies, as well as in their mouths; the nerves from all these sensors converge on massive sensory processing lobes in the brain, lobes unknown in other animals. how does a catfish view the world? What does it feel like to be inside its brain? There are reported cases in which a dog wags its tail and greets with joy a man it has never met before; he turns out to be the ~ Carl Sagan

WANT
I want to hold Shelley
with the force of an eagle
taming the wind within its wings.

I want to grasp him unfailingly,
like a gentle moth
dancing with flame.

I want to have strength enough
to beat off the beasts
that dwell within his heart.

I want to believe
in impossible promises
and shift the world
so they can be kept.

I want to be more
than a girl
selling books
in a bankrupt shop. ~ Lita Judge

The eastern light our spires touch at morning, The light that slants upon our western doors at evening, The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight, Moon light and star light, owl and moth light, Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade. O Light Invisible, we worship Thee! ~ T. S. Eliot

I try to make very careful decisions about what I choose to do, and it's - I know that unfortunately one of the misperceptions about me, I think, is that I'm sort of a moth to the limelight. ~ Monica Lewinsky

One night, a group of moths gathered on a shelf watching a burning candle. Puzzled by the nature of the light, they sent one of their members to go and check on it. The scouting moth circled the candle several times and came back with a description: The light was bright. Then a second moth went to examine it. He, too, came back with an observation: The light was hot. Finally a third moth volunteered to go. When he approached the candle he didn't stop like his friends had done, but flew straight into the flame. He was consumed there and then, and only he understood the nature of the light. ~ Elif Shafak

A Bookworm
A moth ate a word. To me that seemed
A curious happening when I heard of that wonder,
That a worm should swallow the word of a man,
A thief in the dark eat a thoughtful discourse
And the strong base it stood on. He stole, but he was not
A whit the wiser when the word had been swallowed. ~ Anonymous

A moth is such a simple machine in the animal world - the go-kart to the modern car - and it takes a lot of glitches to prevent it going. It's this intriguing simplicity, the idea that you could pull it into its constituent parts and put it back together in the same rainy day, that if you pulled back the skin, you could watch the inner workings, that makes a moth such an absorbing creature to study. Moths have a universal character: there are no individuals. Each reacts to a precise condition or stimulus in a predictable and replicable way. They are pre-programmed robots, unable to learn from experience. For instance, we know they will allways react to a smell, a pheromone or a particular spectrum of light in the same way. I can mimic the scent of a flower so that a moth will direct itself towards that scent ... ~ Poppy Adams

The world knows caterpillar becomes butterfly but they don't care that it also becomes a moth. One is diurnal another nocturnal.Human once awakened can change the view to change self from Angulimala to a Buddha ~ Milarepa

The Sky A Silver"

the sky a silver
dissonance by the correct
fingers of April
resolved

into a
clutter of trite jewels

now like a moth with stumbling

wings flutters and flops along the
grass collides with trees and
houses and finally,
butts into the river ~ E. E. Cummings

The moth batted its wings angrily at him as it twisted and spun gracelessly in the green blades. For
Consort's sake, throw us a lifeline and stop lettin' death take me hand! ~ C. Kennedy

Her voice would die before she ran out of rage. She could scream a hole in her throat and come unraveled, fall to pieces like moth-chewed silk, and still, from the leftover shreds of her, the little pile of tatters, would pour forth this unending scream. ~ Laini Taylor

People were drawn to her the way a moth clings to a porch light, and I was the most hypnotized of all. ~ Brielle A. Marino

The creatures came up the stairs a few at a time, pausing to sit up and sniff the air. Their eyes glinted in the darkness.They were a foot long. They were covered in moth-eaten grey fur and they had enormous fangs and big bushy tails, and there were maybe twenty of them, chittering from all around.
Vampire crack squirrels, thought James, and wished he hadn't. ~ Jonathan Blum

The night life draws me in like a moth to a flame and not even fear could convince me to not walk amongst the giants that line the streets. ~ Z.L. Arkadie

You're too arrogant for your own good," Galien accused him defensively. "The man is an imperial wizard. What he is capable of is beyond your comprehension. For all we know, he may have been visiting her in the form of a butterfly in the garden or a moth that entered her bedroom window each night. We had to be sure."

"A butterfly?" Saldur said, genuinely amazed.

"He's a wizard. Damn you. That's what they do."

"I highly doubt - "

"The point is we didn't know for sure. ~ Michael J. Sullivan

It struck me that we-that moth and I-were two opposite extremes. My existence was as unstable as a stream, changing in every
way; but the moth was like a piece of stone, changing not at all. While thinking this thought, I reached out a finger to feel the moth's velvety surface; but when I brushed it with my fingertip, it turned all at once into a pile of ash without even a sound, without even a moment in which I could see it crumbling. I was so astonished I let out a cry. The swirling in my mind stopped; I felt as if I had stepped into the eye of a storm. I let the tiny shroud and its pile of ashes flutter to the ground; and now I understood the thing that had puzzled me all morning. The stale air had washed away. The past was gone. ~ Arthur Golden

Bee to the blossom, moth to the flame; Each to his passion; what's in a name? ~ Helen Hunt Jackson

Stepping towards her, he warned himself this was wrong. Being drunk and being this near to her was playing with his mind; he could not help it she got to him. With the music in the background the moon illuminating the field, he was like a moth to a flame. Her hair was laying in soft curls, the wind moving it over her face; he brushed it back to look into her eyes better. In the darkness, he could not tell but he felt her eyes had to be glowing with those unusual gold highlights.

"She is jealous of you, a girl that is naturally beautiful without trying."

Maggie frowned slightly shaking her head dismissing his suggestion; Jon lifted her chin and lowered his face to kiss her. ~ Caroline Walken

My existence was as unstable as a stream, changing in every way; but the moth was like a piece of stone, changing not at all. ~ Arthur Golden

There are queer things, evil things, out yonder, and there are bones of white men bleaching in the sun who have sought to know too much. Curiosity doesn't pay yonder.

("The Great White Moth") ~ Frederick Merrick White

Hail, happiness, then, and after happiness, hail not those dreams which bloat the sharp image as spotted mirrors do the face in a country-inn parlour; dreams which splinter the whole and tear us asunder and wound us and split us apart in the night when we would sleep; but sleep, sleep, so deep that all shapes are ground to dust of infinite softness, water of dimness inscrutable, and there, folded, shrouded, like a mummy, like a moth, prone let us lie on the sand at the bottom of sleep. ~ Virginia Woolf

Sitting on Rosa's moth-littered bed, he felt a resurgence of all the aches and inspirations of those days when his life had revolved around nothing but Art, when snow fell like the opening piano notes of the Emperor Concerto, and feeling horny reminded him of a passage from Nietzsche, and a thick red-streaked dollop of crimson paint in an otherwise uninteresting Velazquez made him hungry for a piece of rare meat. ~ Michael Chabon

Taking the logic of Jinnah's demand to its extreme, Congress now offered him a 'Pakistan' stripped of the Punjab's eastern divisions (Ambala and Jullundur), Assam (except Sylhet district) and western Bengal and Calcutta - the 'mutilated and moth-eaten' Pakistan which Jinnah had rejected out of hand in 1944 and again in May 1946. Such a permanent settlement would at a stroke eject Jinnah from the centre, clear the way for a strong unitary government wholly under Congress's sway, and give away only parts of provinces which past experience had shown lay outside the Congress's ken. ~ Ayesha Jalal

Beautiful, fragile, fleeting, the sunrise shell; but not, for all that, illusory. Because it is not lasting, let us not fall into the cynic's trap and call it an illusion. Duration is not a test of true or false. The day of the dragon-fly or the night of the Saturnid moth is not invalid simply because that phase in its life cycle is brief. Validity need have no relation to time, to duration, to continuity. It is on another plane, judged by other standards. "And what is actual is actual only for one time and only for one place." The sunrise shell has the eternal validity of all beautiful and fleeting things. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

There's something about Twitch.
He's just ... raw.
Everything about him is raw. And gritty. And unbound.
He's a raging fire. And I'm a fragile moth fluttering into the flame. Sooner or later, I'm going to get burned. I know this.
Will I even survive the heat? ~ Belle Aurora

He was a moth to her flame, a marshmallow to her campfire, a redneck to her bottle rocket ... ~ Nine Naughty Novelists

Haven't seen the Navigator yet," Michaels said, standing next to the window. "Fine. They're probably parked on the other side," Judge suggested from directly behind Michaels. He didn't have to stand that close and there were other windows, but he was drawn to Michaels' flame like a moth. "I'm starving," Michaels said, out of the blue. "Me, too." "We'll ~ A.E. Via

He bent to lay his mouth on hers, thrusting his tongue lazily past her lips until she sucked on the thick length. "Are they any different?" he whispered against her mouth, "my kisses? Have they changed so much with my name?" She cracked her eyelids to look at him and murmur into the humid heat between them, "I can't tell. Perhaps you should demonstrate again." He licked at the corner of her mouth. "A scientific study, you mean?" His mouth trailed up her cheek, soft as a moth. "Quite," she breathed. "As you wish. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

Humans will be like decayed gentry. We'll have the glorious mansion called the past that is falling into disrepair. We'll have a piece of land that we didn't look after very well called the planet. And we'll have some nice clothes and a lot of stories. We'll be fading aristocracy. We'll be Blanche Dubois in a moth-eaten silk dress. We'll be Marie Antionette with no cake. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Unlike most divorced parents, whose interactions are confined to the topic of the kids, people still sharing a house have to talk about clogged sinks and moth infestations. ~ Katie Hafner

Old age is, it occurs to Busner as he lies stranded on his side staring at the clock radio, a form of institutionalisation
it deprives you of your identity and supplies another, simpler one, it takes away your clothing and issues you with a uniform of slack-waisted trousers, threadbare jackets and moth-eaten cardigans, togs that are either coming from or going to charity shops. This done, it commits you to a realm at once confined and unbounded, an atrophying circuit of corridors that connect strip-lit and overheating rooms where you fade away your days reading day-old newspapers and specialist magazines
albeit not ones relating to the specialty that awaits you. ~ Will Self

You Are What You Eat

Take food for example. We all assume that our craving or disgust is due to something about the food itself - as opposed to being an often arbitrary response preprogrammed by our culture. We understand that Australians prefer cricket to baseball, or that the French somehow find Gerard Depardieu sexy, but how hungry would you have to be before you would consider plucking a moth from the night air and popping it, frantic and dusty, into your mouth? Flap, crunch, ooze. You could wash it down with some saliva beer.How does a plate of sheep brain's sound? Broiled puppy with gravy? May we interest you in pig ears or shrimp heads? Perhaps a deep-fried songbird that you chew up, bones, beak, and all? A game of cricket on a field of grass is one thing, but pan-fried crickets over lemongrass? That's revolting.

Or is it? If lamb chops are fine, what makes lamb brains horrible? A pig's shoulder, haunch, and belly are damn fine eatin', but the ears, snout, and feet are gross? How is lobster so different from grasshopper? Who distinguishes delectable from disgusting, and what's their rationale? And what about all the expectations? Grind up those leftover pig parts, stuff 'em in an intestine, and you've got yourself respectable sausage or hot dogs. You may think bacon and eggs just go together, like French fries and ketchup or salt and pepper. But the combination of bacon and eggs for breakfast was dreamed up about a hundred years aqo by an advertis ~ Christopher Ryan

Moth to a flame I follow. ~ Karen Marie Moning

I sure wasn't going to ask Aunt Sally, because if she told me once that getting your period was like a moth becoming a butterfly, she'd probably say that sexual intercourse was like a deer getting antlers or something. ~ Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

I am but as the spark that gleams for a moment,
His burning candle consumed me - the moth;
His wine overwhelmed my goblet,
The master of Rum transmuted my earth to gold
And set my ashes aflame. ~ Muhammad Iqbal

Like the moth whose feet are caught in the molten wax of a candle, Rouget rapidly used up his remaining energy. ~ Honore De Balzac

Enough bickering, ladies," Zack said. "Let's - hey, is that blood?" He asked, pointing to my jeans. Attention span of a moth…

J.M. Friedman. Succubus in Seattle (Kindle Locations 382-383). ~ J.R. Thorn

I don't mind being a moth. I would probably start eating silk if it meant that I could fly. ~ Marie Rutkoski

Like a child at bedtime who insists she's not tired, Celia's provocation was all unproductive, almost self-negating. Sometimes I thought this was just her scorpion nature, but other times it seemed to me that she had settled on this pose purposefully, out of some dimly perceived, horribly misplaced idea that the job of an artist was to hide her light under the darkest bushel possible and wait for a dedicated acolyte to be drawn to it like a clairvoyant moth. ~ Rachel Pastan

The subject dropped, and we sat on in the dusk that was rapidly deepening into night. The door into the hall was open at our backs, and a panel of light from the lamps within was cast out to the terrace. Wandering moths, invisible in the darkness, suddenly became manifest as they fluttered into this illumination, and vanished again as they passed out of it. One moment they were there, living things with life and motion of their own, the next they quite disappeared. How inexplicable that would be, I thought, if one did not know from long familiarity, that light of the appropriate sort and strength is needed to make material objects visible.

Philip must have been following precisely the same train of thought, for his voice broke in, carrying it a little further.

'Look at that moth,' he said, 'and even while you look it has gone like a ghost, even as like a ghost it appeared. Light made it visible. And there are other sorts of light, interior psychical light which similarly makes visible the beings which people the darkness of our blindness.' ("Expiation") ~ E.F. Benson

He was right. Love enfeebled a man. She saw this with Marcus and Drusus. It could possess, enrage, and overcome reason. It could drive vengeance and inspire passion and courage. She smiled as she lit another lamp and set up her handloom. For, unlike a man, love gave a woman power. A night moth had become a patrician's mistress. The impossible had been made possible. ~ Elisabeth Storrs

[Her delicate beauty must avoid a strong light. There is something about her uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth.] ~ Tennessee Williams

Her lips were drawn to his like a moth to a flame. ~ Anya Seton

Those giants of old, the ancient Rishis, who never walked but strode, of whom if you were to think but for a moment you would shrivel up into a moth, they sir, had time-and you have no time! ~ Swami Vivekananda

She grabbed her briefcase and took a step toward him. "You don't have a last name?"
"Everyone has a last name." His hand hovered in the air, waiting. He was forcing her to cross the marble floor to meet him, and like a Luna moth drawn to a midnight moon, she drifted toward him.
When she reached him, she took his hand and looked up into his face. "Is it Jones? Smith? Or Brown?"
His lips twitched. "None of the above."
"And you won't tell me?"
"It's not necessary information."
She tilted her head, studying his angular features. "You don't look like an Adrian."
His smile broadened. "Imagine that."
"More like a Carlos, or a Juan, or a Diego."
"Those are Hispanic names."
"Aren't you Hispanic?"
"I'm anything you want me to be. ~ Shelby Reed

Every object strives for its proper place. A book seeks to be near its truest admirer. Just as this helpless moth seeks to be near the candle that infatuates him. ~ Vikram Seth

'Don't be the moth. Be the light bulb.' When I say that I mean don't follow the crowd. Just shine. Be the light bulb. Do your thing. Pave your own path. ~ Sara Paxton

There's a moth, more than one in fact, that lives only on tears," he offered. "That's all they eat or drink." "What kind of tears? Whose tears?" "The tears of large land mammals, about our size. ~ Thomas Harris

I wish to drown in my pain, alone, just like a moth dancing to its death in the flame! ~ Nishta Kochar

Ariel contributed nothing to the speculation, instead crossing his arms one over the other. The action recalled his butterfly familiars from the skies, and they flocked to him with eager wing beats.
"Bats!" Moth flailed at the air. "Vampire bats!"
"Don't be ridiculous," Peaseblossom said with a sniff. "Vampire bats don't sparkle. ~ Lisa Mantchev

The clock struck half past two. In the little office at the back of Mr. McKechnie's bookshop, Gordon
Gordon Comstock, last member of the Comstock family, aged twenty-nine and rather moth-eaten already
lounged across the table, pushing a fourpenny packet of Player's Weights open and shut with his thumb. ~ George Orwell

You are the flame, not the moth. And your job is to burn with conviction. ~ Heidi Priebe

A story demanded to be written, and that is why I have not answered your letter before: a wrong-headed story, that would come blundering like a moth on my window, and stare in with small red eyes, and I the last writer in the world to manage such a subject. One should have more self-control. One should be able to say, Go away. You have come to the wrong inkstand, there is nothing for you here. But I am so weakminded that I cannot even say, Come next week. ~ Sylvia Townsend Warner

Being kissed on the back of the knee is a moth at the windowscreen ... ~ Anne Sexton

After all, there is little we can do when we're sitting at the same table and drinking tea with someone we hate. Judas himself could be sitting at our table, and we wouldn't ask him about Jesus. We would talk to him about the weather. ~ Stig Dagerman

How can she create with all your negative energy?"
"Yeah, man. You're bringing us down."
"This is about as low as it gets," Ariel said. "Where did you get those ridiculous black berets?"
Moth adjusted his recently donned beatnik attire. "This is what the hip cats wear , daddy-o."
"Can you dig it?" Cobweb stroked a few wisps of fake chin hair, while the others nodded and snapped their fingers. ~ Lisa Mantchev

His eyes darted over the surface of my face. Like a moth to a blaze he was hesitant, seeming to crave my warmth but not its inevitable burn. He explored me from a distance with his unspoken desire, with the fear that touching me would set him to flame. I wanted nothing more in that moment than to prove very much the opposite. ~ Shawn Kirsten Maravel

Her body was wrapped in shadows like moth wings, like rose-petals. ~ Stephen King

The Release

In those last moments before
the platter of salt and dirt
lay on his stomach, wax-light
had waved across a mute heart,
his son waited by the bed.
Raised to believe the soul left
the body with its last breath,
he listened for death's rattle,
then pressed his lips like a kiss
to his father's lips, and took
into his mouth the breath that
had given him breath, a life
distilled to one stir of air
soft as moth wings against palms,
held a moment, then let go. ~ Ron Rash

It takes years for the moth to evolve from an egg into an adult," he said. "In its final stage the caterpillar spins a cocoon and then it dissolves completely until it's just liquid, then it transforms. It becomes something else entirely. A huge emperor moth. But it's not that easy. Before it can live as a moth it has to fight it's way out of the cocoon. Not all make it."
"They would if I was there," said Ruth, taking another gulp.
Gabriel was uncharacteristically silent.
"What? What is it?" demanded Ruth.
"They need to fight their way out of the cocoon. It builds their wings and muscles. It's the struggle that saves them. Without it they're crippled. If you help an emperor moth, you kill it. ~ Louise Penny

She didn't know why she was so attracted to this stranger, like a moth to the flame, but it scared her. ~ Lindsay Chamberlin

All the expressions that are possible crossed its face, as if its thoughts were wise and limitless one moment, daft and animal the next. And Liga too was pulled towards awe, that this little girl-thing gave off such an air of being entitled, and then towards pity at its abjectness and its frailty and-how soft it was, the surface of it, and so warm! She could not believe the tiny makings of its mouth, or its perfected eyelashes, its ears like uncrumpling buds, all down and tenderness. She was full of the joy of her father being gone-that she could sit like this all night if she wanted, not bothered or harangued, without a remark from any other person, and watch this creature busy with its morsel of life, its scrap of sleep, its breaths light as moth-wings lifting its narrow red chest. ~ Margo Lanagan

She pressed on, knowing she shouldn't. Unable to stop. "I wantyou, Devil. I want to woo you. I want to be your flame. But I fear . . ." She paused, hating the way he watched her, as though he saw every word that was coming before she formed it. And perhaps he did. It didn't matter. "I fear I am your moth, instead. ~ Sarah MacLean

She and Harriet Warner were worlds apart not only in looks, but also their place on earth–a monarch butterfly and a luna moth. Each had been dropped into lives that were polar opposites, traveling along different longitudes lines destined never to intersect. ~ Karen White

Between our birth and death we may touch understanding, As a moth brushes a window with its wing. ~ Christopher Fry

THE MOTH AND THE BUTTERFLY

When the sun rises over the horizon,
the butterfly emerges to dance in its brilliant light.
It flickers its colorful wings with euphoria,
To celebrate all the beauty found
in the majestic garden of life.

When the moon arrives in the darkness,
The moth appears at the disappearance of sunlight.
It flickers its pale wings as it shakes from its deep slumber,
To go search for food
To carry it through the night.

The moth prefers the moon and detests the sun,
while the butterfly loves the sun and hides from the moon.
Every living creature responds to light,
But depending on the amount of light you have inside,
Determines which lamp in the sky
Your heart will swoon.

Poetry by Suzy Kassem ~ Suzy Kassem

The most-studied evidence, by the greatest number of economists, concerns what is called short-term dependence. This refers to the way price levels or price changes at one moment can influence those shortly afterwards-an hour, a day, or a few years, depending on what you consider "short." A "momentum" effect is at work, some economists theorize: Once a stock price starts climbing, the odds are slightly in favor of it continuing to climb for a while longer. For instance, in 1991 Campbell Harvey of Duke- he of the CFO study mentioned earlier-studied stock exchanges in sixteen of the world's largest economies. He found that if an index fell in one month, it had slightly greater odds of falling again in the next moth, or, if it had risen, greater odds of continuing to rise. Indeed, the data show, the sharper the move in the first, the more likely is is that the price trend will continue into the next month, although at a slower rate. Several other studies have found similar short-term trending in stock prices. When major news about a company hits the wires, the stock will react promptly-but it may keep on moving for the next few days as the news spreads, analysts study it, and more investors start to act upon it. ~ Benoit B Mandelbrot

I feel like the caterpillar that we think is making a choice when he eats or pupates but, in fact, is not. He's ruled by molecular forms of incluence acting on the base components of a moth. Likewise, perhaps I have become a killer through circumstances acting on my biological make-up. Which means, of course, that none of this is my fault and that it's all out of my hands. ~ Poppy Adams

We were passing the city cemetery. Adjoining it was a field occupied only by a couple of amiable and moth-eaten horses, and a grey tower. I asked what the tower was for. My grandfather answered that it held a giant's arm. ~ Isobelle Carmody

Never will I make that extra effort to live according to reality which alone makes good writing possible: hence the manic-depressiveness of my style, - which is either bright, cruel and superficial; or pessimistic; moth-eaten with self-pity ~ Cyril Connolly

I can't smell moth balls, I find it too difficult to get their tiny legs apart ~ Steve Martin

Poor moth, I can't help you,
I can only turn out the light. ~ Ryszard Krynicki