Pest Quotes

They (the Jews) work more effectively against us, than the enemy's armies. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in ... It is much to be lamented that each state, long ago, has not hunted them down as pest to society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America. ~ George Washington

in heavenly realms of hellas dwelt
two very different sons of zeus:
one, handsome strong and born to dare
--a fighter to his eyelashes--
the other,cunning ugly lame;
but as you'll shortly comprehend
a marvellous artificer

now Ugly was the husband of
(as happens every now and then
upon a merely human plane)
someone completely beautiful;
and Beautiful,who(truth to sing)
could never quite tell right from wrong,
took brother Fearless by the eyes
and did the deed of joy with him

then Cunning forged a web so subtle
air is comparatively crude;
an indestructible occult
supersnare of resistless metal:
and(stealing toward the blissful pair)
skilfully wafted over them-
selves this implacable unthing

next,our illustrious scientist
petitions the celestial host
to scrutinize his handiwork:
they(summoned by that savage yell
from shining realms of regions dark)
laugh long at Beautiful and Brave
--wildly who rage,vainly who strive;
and being finally released
flee one another like the pest

thus did immortal jealousy
quell divine generosity,
thus reason vanquished instinct and
matter became the slave of mind;
thus virtue triumphed over vice
and beauty bowed to ugliness
and logic thwarted life:and thus--
but look around you,friends and foes

my tragic tale concludes herewith: ~ E.E. Cummings

She soon learned that to survive atrocity is to be made an honorary consul to a republic of pain. There existed unspoken protocols governing how she was expected to suffer. Total breakdown, a failure to grieve graciously, was a violation of those rules. But so was the absence of suffering, so was outright forgiveness.What she and others like her were allowed was a kind of passive bereavement, the right to pose for newspaper photographs holding framed pictures of their dead relations in their hands, the right to march in boisterous but toothless parades, the right to call for an end to bloodshed as though bloodshed were some pest or vagrant who could be evicted or run out of town. As long as she adhered to those rules, moved within those margins, she remained worthy of grand, public sympathy. ~ Omar El Akkad

Among all mental diseases that have been systematically inoculated into the human cranium, the religious pest is the most abominable. ~ Johann Most

Hope, though; now there's a real pest. Hope doesn't just nibble your cheese and chew holes in your skirting boards. Hope keeps you plodding on when it really is time to call it quits. Hope drags you to sixteen auditions in a single day, when there's a nice job in your brother-in-law's tannery just waiting for you. Hope keeps you going in Old Stairs or Paradise, even though there's no money and nothing to eat and the landlord just took your chair and your chamber pot. Personally, I can see no great merit in simply being alive if you're miserable and in pain, but Hope won't let you go. She's a tease, like bad children teasing a dumb animal, and I've made a point of avoiding her whenever I can. Still, sometimes she runs you down and there's nowhere left for you to go. You can turn and fight her and lose, or let her scoop you up and turn your brain to mush.

Hope against hope. We had human chains shifting those blocks with levers and rollers, through the narrow alleys where carts couldn't go. We had shifts digging the ditch by lamplight, in the rain. And in every working party there was at least one man who cheerfully announced that it wasn't going to work, the whole idea was stupid, the enemy'll find a way round this in two shakes, just you see; and even he didn't really believe it, because of Hope. Hope turns a hundred men and women ripping the skin off their hands on a coarse hemp rope into a street party. Someone tells a joke, or clowns around, or starts singing a f ~ K.J. Parker

These voices - the inner critic, the inner nag, the inner pest, the inner jerk and all the other monsters who try to talk you out of moving forward - are the part of you that is threatened by change and progress. We all have them. They are trying to protect you from new and scary things, but they are out of sync with you right now and not helpful. They hate what you are doing, but that doesn't make them right, ~ Danny Gregory

The appearance of a pest should be regarded as a warning from Mother Earth to put our house in order. ~ Albert Howard

Wait - no, not drifting. Following us. "We have an audience," I said to Reth, nodding at the clusters of flying insects.
"I suppose we can't make the Dark Queen any angrier with us than she already is," he said, then his perfect mouth moved, silently forming words, and he gracefully waved his hands through the air in a semicircle. The warm breeze suddenly froze, and I saw frost eat across the nearest butterflies' wings. They stopped midair, then dropped to the ground with tiny clinking noises, frozen solid.
A serene smile spread across Reth's face. "I've always disliked insects."
"If the whole being-a-faerie thing doesn't work out for you, you definitely have a future in pest control. ~ Kiersten White

He glanced down at her, keeping his expression carefully impassive. "I hate to leave you." There was a gently mocking edge to his tone. "You need someone to follow you around and keep you safe from mishaps. On the other hand, you also need someone to find a beekeeper."
Realizing he was not going to talk about Leo, Amelia followed his lead. "Will you do that for us? I would consider it a great favor."
"Of course. Although…" His eyes held a wicked glitter. "As I mentioned before, I can't keep doing favors for you with no reward. A man needs incentive."
"If … if you want money, I'll be glad to - "
"God, no." Rohan was laughing now. "I don't want money." Reaching out, he smoothed back her hair, letting the heel of his hand graze the edge of her cheekbone. The brush of his skin was light and erotic, causing her to swallow hard. "Goodbye, Miss Hathaway. I'll see myself out." He flashed a smile at her and advised, "Stay away from the windows."
On the way down the stairs, Rohan passed Merripen, who was ascending at a measured pace.
Merripen's face darkened at the sight of the visitor. "What are you doing here?"
"It seems I'm helping with pest eradication."
"Then you can begin by leaving," Merripen growled.
Rohan only grinned nonchalantly, and continued on his way. ~ Lisa Kleypas

That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country's champion, the Moore of Moore Hall, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest? ~ Henry David Thoreau

I want to know everything. I'm probably a bit of a pest for the producers because I ask a lot of questions. ~ Kieran Bew

No consideration at all is given to the interests of the "pests" - the very word "pest" seems to exclude any concern for the animals themselves. But the classification "pest" is our own, and a rabbit that is a pest is as capable of suffering, and as deserving of consideration, as a white rabbit who is a beloved companion animal. ~ Peter Singer

Nobody gets out of love alive. You turn into a menace or a pest when you've been rejected. ~ Helen Fisher

With a tiny bit of effort, the nettle would be useful; if you neglect it, it becomes a pest. So then we kill it. How many men are like nettles ... My friends, there is no such thing as a weed and no such thing as a bad man. There are only bad cultivators. ~ Victor Hugo

Where lies the power, there let the blame lie too.
Nay, power is relative; you cannot fright
The coming pest with border fortresses,
Or catch your carp with subtle argument.
All force is twain in one: cause is not cause
Unless effect be there; and action's self
Must needs contain a passive. So command
Exists but with obedience. ~ George Eliot

Gary Greenberg is a thoughtful comedian and a cranky philosopher and a humble pest of a reporter, equal parts Woody Allen, Kierkegaard, and Columbo. The Book of Woe is a profound, and profoundly entertaining, riff on malady, power, and truth. This book is for those of us (i.e. all of us) who've ever wondered what it means, and what's at stake, when we try to distinguish the suffering of the ill from the suffering of the human. ~ Gideon Lewis-Kraus

Sniffer of carrion, premature gravedigger, seeker of the nest of evil in the bosom of a good word, you, who sleep at our vigil and fast for our feast, you with your dislocated reason, have cutely foretold, a jophet in your own absence, by blind poring upon your many scalds and burns and blisters, impetiginous sore and pustules, by the auspices of that raven cloud, your shade, and by the auguries of rooks in parlament, death with every disaster, the dynamatisation of colleagues, the reducing of records to ashes, the levelling of all customs by blazes, the return of a lot of sweetempered gunpowdered didst unto dudst but it never stphruck your mudhead's obtundity (O hell, here comes our funeral! O pest, I'll miss the post!) that the more carrots you chop, the more turnips you slit, the more murphies you peel, the more onions you cry over, the more bullbeef you butch, the more mutton you crackerhack, the more potherbs you pound, the fiercer the fire and the longer your spoon and the harder you gruel with more grease to your elbow the merrier fumes your new Irish stew. ~ James Joyce

I'd called Marin a nuisance, had made her feel unwelcome and unwanted, the same way I was feeling now. Not being wanted was the loneliest feeling in the world, it seemed, and if I could have had one more moment with Marin, I would have been sure to tell her I didn't mean it. She wasn't a pest. I loved her. She was wanted. More than she could ever know. ~ Jennifer Brown

On the other hand, those who are willing to wait for an extra season other two for full results (against an Japanese beetle) will turn to milky disease; they will be rewarded with lasting control that become more, rather than less effective with the passage of time. ~ Rachel Carson

I'm thinking he might be a sex pest. ~ L. H. Cosway

The pest, in a sense, is a very superior being to us: he knows where to find us and how
usually in the bath or in sexual intercourse or asleep. ~ Charles Bukowski

He told himself she wasn't really such a bad person, she was just a pest, she was sticky, there was something misplaced in her make-up, something that kept her from fading clear of people when they wanted to be in the clear. ~ David Goodis

You are a pest, by the very nature of that camera in your hand. ~ Princess Anne

There is a fine line between persistence and being a pest, my lord. ~ Kristen Callihan

It must be confessed that though the plague was chiefly among the poor, yet were the poor the most venturous and fearless of it, and went about their employment with a sort of brutal courage; I must call it so, for it was founded neither on religion or prudence; scarce did they use any caution, but run into any business which they could get employment in, though it was the most hazardous. Such was that of tending the sick, watching houses shut up, carrying infected persons to the pest-house, and, which was still worse, carrying the dead away to their graves. ~ Daniel Defoe

The Central Indian Trifakirs, though something of a pest, were quite harmless. They always appeared in threes, of course, and made a practice of handing out muddle-headed philosophical tracts. ~ Walter Moers

A friend in need is a pest. ~ Bobby Heenan

So who gave him his name?" I asked.
"Kerrick," Belen answered.
Not who I'd expect. "Why 'Flea'?"
A full-out grin spread across Flea's face. "Cause I'm fast and hard to catch."
"Because he's a pest and hard to squash," Belen said.
"Because he jumps about three feet in the air when you scare him," Loren added.
"Because he's annoying and makes us itch with impatience," Quain said.
"Thanks, guys. I love you too." Flea made exaggerated kissing noises and patted his ass. ~ Maria V. Snyder

but perhaps it will help if we all realize that perhaps all of us have been pests at one time or another to somebody but we never knew it. shit, it's a horrible thought but most probably true and maybe it will help us bear up under the pest. basically, there is no 100 percent man. we are all run through with various madnesses and uglinesses that we ourselves are not aware of but that everybody else is aware of. how ya gonna keep us down on the farm? ~ Charles Bukowski

Sometimes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are presented as a hunting expeditions ("As British close in on Basra, Iraqis scurry away"; "Terror hunt snares twenty-five"; and "Net closes around Bin Laden") with enemy bases as animal nests ("Pakistanis give up on lair of Osama"; "Terror nest in Fallujah is attacked") from which the prey must be driven out ("Why Bin Laden is so difficult to smoke out"; "America's new dilemma: how to smoke Bin Laden out from caves"). We need to trap the animal ("Trap may net Taliban chief"; "FBI terror sting nets mosque leaders") and lock it in a cage ("Even locked in a cage, Saddam poses serious danger"). Sometimes the enemy is a ravening predator ("Chained beast - shackled Saddam dragged to court"), or a monster ("The terrorism monster"; "Of monsters and Muslims"), while at other times he is a pesky rodent ("Americans cleared out rat's nest in Afghanistan"; "Hussein's rat hole"), a venomous snake ("The viper awaits"; "Former Arab power is 'poisonous snake'"), an insect ("Iraqi forces find 'hornet's nest' in Fallujah"; "Operation desert pest"; "Terrorists, like rats and cockroaches, skulk in the dark"), or even a disease organism ("Al Qaeda mutating like a virus"; "Only Muslim leaders can remove spreading cancer of Islamic terrorism"). In any case, they reproduce at an alarming rate ("Iraq breeding suicide killers"; "Continent a breeding ground for radical Islam"). ~ David Livingstone Smith

What we should be very concerned about is the excesses and the abuses. Where we see hunts where the fox is torn away out of the hole and thrown to the hounds, we have to be very concerned. Where we have hunts where foxes are bred for the sport of it, that is not pest control. That is pure bloody sport. ~ Huw Irranca-Davies

In New York, the European starling - now a ubiquitous avian pest from Alaska to Mexico - was introduced because someone thought the city would be more cultured if Central Park were home to each bird mentioned in Shakespeare. ~ Alan Weisman

Herein lies our problem. If we level that much land to grow rice and whatever, then no other animal could live there except for some insect pest species. Which is very unfortunate. ~ Steve Irwin

Cyber Leader: Daleks, be warned. You have declared war upon the Cybermen.
Dalek Sec: This is not war - this is pest control!
Cyber Leader: We have five million Cybermen. How many are you?
Dalek Sec: Four.
Cyber Leader: You would destroy the Cybermen with four Daleks?
Dalek Sec: We would destroy the Cybermen with one Dalek! You superior in only one respect.
Cyber Leader: What is that?
Dalek Sec: You are better at dying. ~ Russell T. Davies

One woman is a pest and two women is a team, but three women or more is a coalition. If you can bring a lot of people together as a coalition, you can get a lot changed. ~ Marlo Thomas

Men are so self-complacent in their own affairs, and so willing to deceive themselves, that they are rescued with difficulty from this pest. If they wish to defend themselves they run the risk of becoming contemptible. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

he worked with great intensity without sparing himself, & he was respected for this, but no one liked him" --crime & punishment ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Things you don't need in your life targets you the most. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

He who wants, but doesn't act, is a pest. ~ William Blake

Hans clacked his side-lips. "Do you have the sentence in your head that tomorrow's procession will halt this pest of yours, that it will bar the small-lives from the High Woods?"
"If it is as you say, no. No more than prayer can stay a charging horse. But that is not why we pray. God is no cheap juggler as to play for a pfennig. ~ Michael Flynn

Luxury, that alluring pest with fair forehead, which, yielding always to the will of the body, throws a deadening influence over the senses, and weakens the limbs more than the drugs of Circe's cup. ~ Claudius Claudianus

It's lovely having grass and trees and flowers(Of course, at times, mosquitoes are a pest).Yes, life is life out here in Rangely Towers(Of course Some People like the city best)! ~ Arthur Guiterman

They were thirsty; this Guillaume brought them water. It was from this well that he drew it. Many drank there their last draught. This well where drank so many of the dead was destined to die itself. After the engagement, they were in haste to bury the dead bodies. Death has a fashion of harassing victory, and she causes the pest to follow glory. The typhus is a concomitant of triumph. This well was deep, and it was turned into a sepulchre. Three hundred dead bodies were cast into it. With too much haste perhaps. Were they all dead? Legend says they were not. It seems that on the night succeeding the interment, feeble voices were heard calling from the well. This well is isolated in the middle ~ Victor Hugo

Kaien Cross: You both entered the room in the same pose! Ooh! If Yuki had seen it, she'd have been so happy! The mystique!
Ichiru: Zero, is he always like this?
Zero: Yeah ... he doesn't act anything like his "former self" now ... why're you sticking to me?
Ichiru: Because you hate it when I do it (I'm being a pest).
Zero(to Cross): Hey. Don't take a photo.
Kaien Cross (thinking): The Kiryus really are twins. ~ Matsuri Hino

I am not a pest, Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus. ~ Beverly Cleary

She climbs a tree
And scrapes her knee
Her dress has got a tear.
She waltzes on her way to mass
And whistles on the stair.
And underneath her wimple
She has curlers in her hair!
Maria's not an asset to the abbey.

She's always late for chapel,
But her penitence is real.
She's always late for everything!
Except for every meal.
I hate to have to say it
But I very firmly feel
Maria's not an asset to the abbey!

I'd like to say a word on her behalf.
Maria makes me laugh.

How do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
How do you find a word that means Maria?
A flibbertigibbet!
A will o' the wisp!
A clown!

Many a thing you know you'd like to tell her,
Many a thing she ought to understand.
But how do you make her stay
And listen to all you say,
How do you keep a wave upon the sand?
Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?

When I'm with her I'm confused
Out of focus and bemused,
And I never know exactly where I am.
Unpredictable as weather,
She's as flighty as a feather,
She's a darling,
She's a demon,
She's a lamb.

She'd out-pester any pest,
Drive a hornet from his nest,
She can throw a whirling dervish out of whirl.
She is gentle,
Rodgers & Hammerstein

It's possible to make one's own grape pest disease culture by looking for sick or dead caterpillars. If sick, they will lose color and move slowly, if at all. At death, they often hang limp and darkened from a leaf by a spot of "glue." Several of these are all you need to treat an acre of vines. Whiz them in a blender with a quart of water, strain, and dilute to spray your vines. Use right away, as this mixture will start to putrefy after just twelve hours. It's a bit grisly, but very cheap and very effective. Just don't forget to clean the blender ~ Jeff Cox

I have had almost every job under the sun, it feels like. One of the first jobs I took was as a door-to-door pest control salesman in Raleigh, North Carolina. ~ Shay Carl

Mr. Edwards admired the well-built, pleasant house and heartily enjoyed the good dinner. But he said he was going on West with the train when it pulled out. Pa could not persuade him to stay longer.
"I'm aiming to go far West in the spring," he said. "This here, country, it's too settled up for me. The politicians are a-swarming in already, and ma'am if'n there's any worse pest than grasshoppers it surely is politicians. Why, they'll tax the lining out'n a man's pockets to keep up these here county-seat towns..."
"Feller come along and taxed me last summer. Told me I got to put in every last thing I had. So I put in Tom and Jerry, my horses, at fifty dollars apiece, and my oxen yoke, Buck and Bright, I put in at fifty, and my cow at thirty five.
'Is that all you got?' he says. Well I told him I'd put in five children I reckoned was worth a dollar apiece.
'Is that all?' he says. 'How about your wife?' he says.
'By Mighty!' I says to him. 'She says I don't own her and I don't aim to pay no taxes on her,' I says. And I didn't. ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

You see, doubt is a magnificently difficult pest of which to try and rid oneself and is worse than any other kind of infestation. It can creep in quietly and through the tiniest of cracks and once inside, it is almost impossible to ever completely remove. ~ Suzanne Rindell

My earliest recollection is of coming upon some rabbit tracks in the backyard snow. I must have been three or so, but I had never seen a rabbit and can still recall the feeling of being completely captivated by the tracks: Someone had been here. And he left these prints. And he was alive. And he lived somewhere nearby, maybe even watching me at this very moment.
Four decades later, I do not need to be reminded that rabbits are often a nuisance to farmers and gardeners. My point is that when you look at a rabbit and can see only a pest, or vermin, or a meal, or a commodity, or a laboratory subject, you aren't seeing the rabbit anymore. You are seeing only yourself and the schemes and appetites we bring to the world
seeing, come to think of it, like an animal instead of as a moral being with moral vision. ~ Matthew Scully

Never was a continent naturally so clean, and made so dirty, as Australia. There was not an animal pest, scarcely a vegetable pest; fools and the old world supplied them all. ~ Randolph Bedford

Alec's eyes glittered for a moment, bright blue under coal-black lashes. He stood up and came over to where Clary was standing by the door. "Wise girl," he said.
"You didn't always think I was wise."
"No, I thought you were a pest, but I know better now." He dropped a kiss on top of her head and went out the door, still carrying his tulip. ~ Cassandra Clare

Oh, how I vainly wished to the bearded man in the sky that I was Neapolitan. Why? So I could bring in a fine Neapolitan pest control to help with Queensberry's problem before it gets out of hand. ~ Oscar Wilde

I'm in love with you Coreen. Your name is embedded in my soul. Ang laking problema, hindi ba? Kaya sana mabaliw ka lang rin sakin para wala na tayong problem. So, I'm sorry, hindi kita iiwasan. Hindi kita lalayuan. I will forever be the pest in your life until you decide to love me back. ~ Jonaxx

What is commonly called a pest is nature's way of bringing back into balance an imbalance that man has created. ~ Alan Chadwick

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

If one does not have the basic conscientious capacity to refute the primitive textual verses of the scriptures that demand one to kill or torture another being for holding a different belief system than one's own, then that entity is no being of the civilized human society, it is merely a pest from the stone-age. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Recently, I have come to assume that any call to my landline is from a telemarketer or an automated call from Terminex, letting me know that our regularly scheduled pest-extermination service will occur on its regular schedule. So I usually ignore my home phone. ~ Susan Orlean

The worthless and offensive members of society, whose existence is a social pest, invariably think themselves the most ill-used people alive, and never get over their astonishment at the ingratitude and selfishness of their contemporaries. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

We must not forget that chemical warfare will sooner or later bring in its wake bacteriological warfare, pest propagation, typhus and other serious diseases. ~ Ferdinand Buisson

Doesn't the Federal Farm bill help out all these poor farmers?
No. It used to, but ever since its inception just after the Depression, the Federal Farm Bill has slowly been altered by agribusiness lobbyists. It is now largely corporate welfare ... It is this, rather than any improved efficiency or productiveness, that has allowed corporations to take over farming in the United States, leaving fewer than a third of our farms still run by families.
But those family-owned farms are the ones more likely to use sustainable techniques, protect the surrounding environment, maintain green spaces, use crop rotations and management for pest and weed controls, and apply fewer chemicals. In other words, they're doing exactly what 80 percent of U.S. consumers say we would prefer to support, while our tax dollars do the opposite. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

It is the accursed inventions of this century that are ruining everything--artilleries, bombards, and, above all, printing, that other German pest. No more manuscripts, no more books! printing will kill bookselling. It is the end of the world that is drawing nigh. ~ Victor Hugo

The dead man in Yossarian's tent was a pest, and Yossarian didn't like him, even though he had never seen him. Having him laying around all day annoyed Yossarian so much that he had gone to the orderly room several times to complain to Sergeant Towser, who refused to admit that the dead man even existed, which, of course, he no longer did. ~ Joseph Heller

I didn't go to university. They offered me a job as a junior reporter and I went off to work for the Southern Reporter. They sent me to college to do my NCTJ, which is a professional exam for journalists, and I started work as a print journalist purely because I was just a pest. They couldn't think of anything other than giving me a job to stop me hanging around. ~ Jill Douglas