Praying Mantis Quotes

An enormous round egg snatching and castrating the agile sperm;
monstorous and stuffed, the queen termite reigning over the servile
males; the praying mantis and the spider, gorged on love, crushing
their partners and gobbling them up; the dog in heat running through
back alleys, leaving perverse smells in her wake; the monkey showing
herself off brazenly, sneaking away with flirtatious hypocrisy. And
the most splendid wildcats, the tigress, lioness, and panther, lie
down slavishly under the male's imperial embrace, inert, impatient,
shrewd, stupid, insensitive, lewd, fierce, and humiliated ~ Simone De Beauvoir

I won't even try to pretend to know what bugs think about during sex, but right about the time the male praying mantis is probably thinking that he's quite the stud, the female does something pretty surprising. Yes, even for horny, bat-shit-crazy, homicidal copulating bugs. Once she has had enough of copulating, she moves on to the next phase, which is masticating. No, not masturbating ... masticating. This is a fancy-schmancy word for chewing. She chews his head off. And no, I don't mean like, "Why didn't you bring me flowers and chocolate?" Oh, no. She literally bites his head off ... and here's where it gets really interesting: She eats it. ~ Michael Makai

Nexus
I wrote stubbornly into the evening.
At the window, a giant praying mantis
rubbed his monkey wrench head against the glass,
begging vacantly with pale eyes;
and the commas leapt at me like worms
or miniature scythes blackened with age.
the praying mantis screeched louder,
his ragged jaws opening into formlessness.
I walked outside;
the grass hissed at my heels.
Up ahead in the lapping darkness
he wobbled, magnified and absurdly green,
a brontosaurus, a poet. ~ Rita Dove

Then set out after repeated warning the grizzly
Afghan Duryodhan
in blazing sun
removed sandal-wood blooded stone-attired guards
spearing gloom brought out a substitute of dawn
crude hell's profuse experience
Huh
a night-waken drug addict beside head of feeble earth
from the cruciform The Clapper could not descend due to lockdown
wet-eyed babies were smiling
.
in a bouquet of darkness in forced dreams
The Clapper wept when learnt about red-linen boat's drowned passengers
in famished yellow winter
white lilies bloomed in hot coal tar
when in chiseled breeze
nickel glazed seed-kernel
moss layered skull which had moon on its shoulder scolded whole night
non-weeping male praying mantis in grass
bronze muscled he-men of Barbadoz
pressed their fevered forehead on her furry navel
.
in comb-flowing rain
floated on frowning waves
diesel sheet shadow whipped oceans
all wings had been removed from the sky
funeral procession of newspaperman's freshly printed dawn
lifelong jailed convict's eye in the keyhole
outside
in autumnal rice pounding pink ankle
Lalung ladies ~ Malay Roychoudhury

I imagine the life of an atheistic praying mantis to be rather torturous. ~ Brian Celio

A large praying mantis was performing ablutions on the springy stem of the kid's cowlick. The gunslinger snorted laughter-the first in gods knew how long-and set the fire and went after water. ~ Stephen King

A black widow loves her mate then kills him. A praying mantis loves her mate then eats him. Women love my dad, but he's too big to eat. ~ Christopher Titus

Ava is like a praying mantis on crack. She will not only chew off his head after she has sex with him, she will have sex with his headless body afterwards and then light it on fire. ~ Tara Sivec

It unsettles the women as they have dropped their disguise and are now giant praying mantis with blonde and auburn wigs, lipstick smeared on those deadly pincher-like insect jaws. ~ Irvine Welsh

I feel like you're trying to convince me that we don't need condoms, but fuck that. If you impregnate me, I'm going to devour " you like a praying mantis." I pin Zeph against the wall and kiss her hard, because her threatening to kill or mutilate me is always so hot. ~ Gisele Walko

Don't you know about the praying mantis that waved its arms angrily in front of an approaching carriage, unaware that they were incapable of stopping it? Such was the high opinion it had of its talents. ~ Zhuangzi

I feel like saying something back to her. Something like, 'Eat hanger, bitch.' Except that Skeletor here doesn't look like she's eaten anything at all since last October. But I don't say anything, of course. Instead I stand there and take shit from someone who looks like a praying mantis in drag.
- Cat ~ Rebecca Sparrow

Think of me as the praying mantis of the supernatural world.
Aren't those the bugs that bite the heads off the males? Link looked skeptical.
Yes. Then they eat them ~ Kami Garcia

The Praying Mantis Visits A Penthouse


The praying Mantis with its length of straw
Out of nowhere's forehead born full armed
Engaged the century at my terrace door.
Focused at inches the dinosaur insect sends
Broadsides of epic stillness at my eye,
Above the deafening projects of the age.
My love, who fears the thunder of its poise,
Has seen it and cries out. The clouds like curls
Fall in my faith as I seize a stick to stop
This Martian raid distilled to a straw with legs,
To wisps of prowess. Bristling with motionlessness
The Mantis prays to the Stick twice armed with Man.
I strike, the stick whistles, shearing off two legs
Which run off by themselves beneath some boards.
The Mantis spreads out tints of batlike wing,
The many colored pennants of its blood,
And hugs my weapon; the frantic greens come out,
the reds and yellows blurt out from the straw,
All sinews doubtless screaming insect death.
Against the railing's edge I knock the stick
Sending that gay mad body into the gulf.
Such noisy trappings in defeat wake doubts.
I search my mind for possible wounds and feel
The victim's body heavy on the victor's heart. ~ Oscar Williams

I first used LSD in my freshman year of high school at a homecoming football game. A friend had taken it too, knew more about it than me, and when asked, told me to just stare at certain things. The friend pointed at a rail that had some paint chipped off it and said "Just look at that... it's trippy." I looked at the rail with some paint chipped off. Nothing happened. I was in front of the school after the game was over and must have been high because two friends were in front of me crying. I asked them why they were crying and they said because I had taken acid. "Are you going to tell my parents?" I asked. "I don't know," they said. I was afraid. On the way home someone in the car started screaming. We found an albino praying mantis in the car, stopped and let it out. In a friend's room, later, I was lying on the bed and seeing in the corners nets of colors beating. A Nirvana poster was surrounded by color and moving slightly. After this incident there are no memories of taking LSD until senior year of high school. No one paid enough attention to notice I wasn't getting dressed in the morning, just taking acid and going to school in my pajamas. I would walk in the hallways staring forward with a neutral facial expression. I was terribly depressed. My mom eventually found out. ~ Brandon Scott Gorrell

I do destroy men on a weekly basis. It's like a hobby. I'm like a praying mantis. ~ Kesha

Percy: Dad-
Poseidon: Very well! It shall be as you say. But my son, pray this works.
Percy: I'm praying, I'm talking to you, right?
Poseidon: Oh ... yes. Good point. ~ Rick Riordan

We pray for those who have ceased to pray. We pray for those that need prayer more than ever, that have fewer and fewer seasons even of thought, that grow hard with years, that are less and less troubled by sin, and that are more and more irreverent of religion. We pray for the children of Christian parents who sometimes weep at the memory of father and mother, but who never have thought of God. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

Seriously brethren, Judas is not in the nightclubs and pool bar right now.
He is in the churches. Singing hymns and praying. gentleman indeed. Closest to Believers but the only thing is he wont go on to receive the Holy Ghost.
This is a ‪healthy‬ ‪information‬ for me because then i will be careful not to be watching and comparing myself with others but instead check myself with the Word. ~ Mary Tornyenyor

You have many flaws, he announced ... "But there was one flaw that made all the other imperfections pale in comparison."
"Was?" she asked. "I don't have this flaw any longer?"
"No, you don't."
"Pray tell," she muttered in exasperation, "what was this terrible flaw?"
He grinned. "You used to be English. ~ Julie Garwood

What then are we to do about our problems? We must learn to live with them until such time as God delivers us from them ... we must pray for grace to endure them without murmuring. Problems patiently endured will work for our spiritual perfecting. They harm us only when we resist them or endure them unwillingly. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

If you want to talk to God, pray. If you want him to talk to you, read your scriptures. ~ Richard G. Scott

Sometimes we pray in our heads and we never get a real opportunity to solidify what it is that we're praying for or what we're praying about. So once you write it down, it's like a flow. It comes out and you solidify the thought or the idea or the request. ~ Iyanla Vanzant

He told me once that praying is like being a soccer coach and calling saints off the bench. ~ Ian Caldwell

While it may be true in some instances that our promised blessings will be fulfilled only in the eternities, it is also true that as we search, pray, and believe, we will often recognize things working together for our good in this life. ~ Susan W. Tanner

Russian may seem narrow-minded, impudent, or even stupid people, but can only pray for those who are against them. ~ Winston Churchill

Pray with perseverance, with faith, with calmness and serenity. ~ Pio Of Pietrelcina

The understanding soul prays; the praying soul gets understanding. ~ Leonard Ravenhill

Writing is praying with me. You know a child would look up at every sentence and say, 'And what shall I say next?' That is just what I do; I ask Him that at every line He would give me not merely thoughts and power, but also every word, even the very rhymes. ~ Frances Ridley Havergal

If we are to pray aright, perhaps it is quite necessary that we pray contrary to our own heart. Not what we want to pray is important, but what God wants us to pray. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Pray for the love which allows you to see the good in your companion. Pray for the love that makes weaknesses and mistakes seem small. Pray for the love to make your companion's joy your own. Pray for the love to want to lessen the load and soften the sorrows of your companion ~ Henry B. Eyring

I cry and pray and try to find the positive or the lesson for my pain. ~ Lisa Vidal

The creeping wilderness will soon take over that church that trusts in its own strength and forgets to watch and pray. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

If I am indeed my own god, I'd better start praying to myself to get myself out of myself. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

O my Savior ... teach me to pray; implant in me all the dispositions needful for the prayer of the Holy Spirit ... Of what use is my prayer if the Holy Spirit does not pray with me? Come, Holy Spirit, come to dwell and work with me! Take possession of my understanding and of my will; govern my actions not only at the moment of prayer but at every moment. ~ Jean Grou

God is going to supply a million dollars, somebody is praying right now, right this second, you're praying for a million dollars and God said, "I have heard your prayer, I know your need, and I'm going to supply the need that you requested," it's done, in Jesus' name. ~ Pat Robertson

It is not possible to live biblical Christianity without being committed to a lifestyle of praying, fasting, giving, serving, and blessing our enemies. A form of Christianity devoid of any of these five elements is not New Testament Christianity. We are all called to fast regularly.

There is no Bible passage that excludes 21st century people in the Western world from the Sermon on the Mount lifestyle because we are too busy or too important, or for any other reason. When we come face to face with Jesus one day, He will not make an exception for us because we lived in the 21st century. What He called the early Church to do is what He calls all believers to do, and He provides the same grace to us to respond. ~ Mike Bickle

The only way to understand the Psalms is on your knees, the whole congregation praying the words of the Psalms with all its strength. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

History belongs to the intercessors - those who believe and pray the future into being. ~ Walter Wink

Pray to catch the bus, then run as fast as you can. ~ Julia Cameron

Some people are so foolish that they think they can go through life without the help of the Blessed Mother. Love the Madonna and pray the rosary, for her Rosary is the weapon against the evils of the world today. All graces given by God pass through the Blessed Mother. ~ Pio Of Pietrelcina

Fasting is more about replacing than it is about abstaining - replacing normal activities with focused times of prayer and feeding on the Word of God. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

He offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea. ~ Herman Melville

There are times ... when we are in the midst of life-moments of confrontation with birth or death, or moments of beauty when nature or love is fully revealed, or moments of terrible loneliness-times when a holy and awesome awareness comes upon us. It may come as deep inner stillness or as a rush of overflowing emotion. It may seem to come from beyond us, without any provocation, or from within us, evoked by music or by a sleeping child. If we open our hearts at such moments, creation reveals itself to us in all it's unity and fullness. And when we return from such a moment of awareness, our hearts long to find some way to capture it in words forever, so that we can remain faithful to it's higher truth.
... When my people search for a name to give to the truth we feel at those moments, we call it God, and when we capture that understanding in timeless poetry, we call it praying. ~ Mary Doria Russell

In my early to mid-20s, a fear of confrontation made it difficult for me to end relationships in a mature or even quasi-sane way. Instead, I would hang on resentfully, praying that my doomed beau would end things first and spare me the displeasure. To add hindrance to hang-up, the men I chose were usually just as stoic as I was. ~ Koren Zailckas

Even though the god in all these religions is basically the same, each regards the way chosen by the others as reprehensible, and to top it all, religionists actually PRAY for one another! They have scorn for their brothers of the right-hand path because their religions carry different labels, and somehow this animosity must be released. What better way than through "prayer"! What a simperingly polite way of saying: "I hate your gusts," is the thinly disguised device known as praying for your enemy! Praying for one's own enemy is nothing more than bargain-basement anger, and of a decidedly shoddy and inferior quality! ~ Anton Szandor LaVey

Life is a free fall parachute jump. Pray all the way down and hope for a safe landing. ~ Robert G. Allen

Be not afraid to pray
to pray is right.
Pray, if thou canst, with hope; but ever pray,
Though hope be weak or sick with long delay;
Pray in the darkness, if there be no light. ~ Hartley Coleridge

He walked the beach the same as before, a single set of footprints praying for the Sun to rise. The whispering Ocean assured him it would all come, a promise to rise and wipe the memories away. ~ Tom Grasso

If we with earnest effort could succeed To make our life one long, connected prayer, As lives of some, perhaps, have been and are; If, never leaving Thee, we have no need Our wandering spirits back again to lead Into Thy presence, but continued there Like angels standing on the highest stair Of the Sapphire Throne: this were to pray indeed! ~ Richard Chenevix Trench

Pray for the strength to walk the high road, which at times may be lonely but which will lead to peace and happiness and joy supernal. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

The more men pray, the less worldly they become. The less they pray, the more worldly they become. I am, of course, speaking of professing Christians at this point. ~ Leonard Ravenhill

At a Clinton press conference, I'm given the luxury of daydreaming, of being comfortable enough that he could find Peru on a map, say, that I don't have to hang on his every word, praying he won't fuck up. ~ Sarah Vowell

They're praying to ham bones, ham bones! The blessed pig! ~ Bernard Cornwell

The Savior is the perfect example of praying for others with real intent. In His great Intercessory Prayer uttered on the night before His Crucifixion, Jesus prayed for His Apostles and all of the Saints. ~ David A. Bednar

We pray for a generation of girls who will display their wit, their intelligence, their modest charm, their integrity, their loveliness rather than their bodies and their sexual possibilities. ~ Spencer W. Kimball

Pray for great things, expect great things, work for great things, but above all pray. ~ R.A. Torrey

I will keep speaking up for the freedom of Tibet ... Till TIBET is FREE or until I pass away and then my spirit will be!
My conviction is that Humanity Must SAVE Tibet ... from the genocide of China. The spirit of Humanity can not afford to lose such a great spiritual , loving & kind nation as Tibet.
It will never recover from a lost such as that. I will keep praying for peace in Tibet ... I hope you will too. ~ Timothy Pina

...I had believed she believed it, and I believed that someday I might could, too, when I were grown enough, but now, kneeling on the hard floors of the boardinghouse with Eliza praying for all of us, I can't feel it. I feel propped up -- on Mam's faith, on Eliza's, on all the women in this room. But all I feel is hollowed out and empty, like someone's scraped their fingernails along the inside of my heart. ~ Mackenzi Lee

Why pray if we cannot change God? ... is that why we pray? To change omniscient Love? Isn't it rather to learn what it is and to fulfill it? Not to change it by our acts, but to change our acts by it. ~ Peter Kreeft

Long ago people used to say what they wanted out loud and hope that someone would give it to them. They called it praying. ~ Ally Condie

Said Father Nash was a most wonderful man in prayer, one of the most earnest, devout, spiritually-minded, heavenly-minded men I ever saw ... He labored about in many places in central and northern New York, and gave himself up to almost constant prayer, literally praying himself to death at last.
I have been informed that he was found dead in his room in the attitude of prayer. ~ Charles Grandison Finney

There is more you can do after you pray, but there is nothing you can do until you pray. ~ Adoniram Judson Gordon

It is now one hour before dawn on a day in Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock is open: Muslims are praying. The Wall is always open: the Jews are praying. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is open: the Christians are praying in several languages. The sun is rising over Jerusalem, its rays making the light Herodian stones of the Wall almost snowy - just as Josephus described it two thousand years ago - and then catching the glorious gold of the Dome of the Rock that glints back at the sun. The divine esplanade where Heaven and Earth meet, where God meets man, is still in a realm beyond human cartography. Only the rays of the sun can do it and finally the light falls on the most exquisite and mysterious edifice in Jerusalem. Bathing and glowing in the sunlight, it earns its auric name. But the Golden Gate remains locked, until the coming of the Last Days. ~ Simon Sebag Montefiore

Being with a friend in great pain is not easy. It makes us uncomfortable. We do not know what to do or what to say, and we worry about how to respond to what we hear. Our temptation is to say things that come more out of our own fear than out of our care for the person in pain. Sometimes we say things like 'Well, you're doing a lot better than yesterday,' or 'You will soon be your old self again,' or 'I'm sure you will get over this.' But often we know that what we're saying is not true, and our friends know it too.
We do not have to play games with each other. We can simply say: 'I am your friend, I am happy to be with you.' We can say that in words or with touch or with loving silence. Sometimes it is good to say: 'You don't have to talk. Just close your eyes. I am here with you, thinking of you, praying for you, loving you. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen