Quotes & Sayings About Ants

Omnivorous red devils with a vicious bite, they have denuded the ground surrounding their hill, destroying everything green and living within a radius of ten feet. I cannot resist the impulse to shove my walking stick into the bowels of their hive and rowel things up. Don't actually care for ants. Neurotic little pismires. Compared to ants the hairy scorpion is a beast of charm, dignity and — Edward Abbey

At night she'd close her eyes and imagine: over a hundred million billion insects hatching and dying every year - all those bristling, pointed, winged lifetimes: murderers and egg raiders, cooperators and queens. There were the glamorous dragonflies and fearsome widows; slave-holding ants; migrating monarchs; the delicate mantid chewing down her lover; dragonflies making love at thirty miles an hour - all the flagships of entomology. But — Anthony Doerr

We're all like little ants who scurry around with the materials that are at hand right now. Each generation finds new materials. Its just evolution, isn't it? — Beth Orton

We living beings, right down to crickets, ants, mosquitoes , and flies, all possess life that is without beginning or end. — Gautama Buddha

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

The day after I got an agent, I got called in for a role in a TV movie called 'Legion Of Fire: Killer Ants.' — Patrick Fugit

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

The life of every man is a way to himself, an attempt at a way, the suggestion of a path. No man has ever been utterly himself, yet every man strives to be so, the dull, the intelligent, each one as best he can. Each man to the end of his days carries round with him vestiges of his birth - the slime and egg-shells of the primeval world. There are many who never become humans; they remain frogs, lizards, ants. Many men are human being above and fish below. Yet each one represents an attempt on the part of nature to create a human being. — Hermann Hesse

Well, reading Twitter's a lot like staring at an ant farm," Tobey explained while wiping some cheese from his mouth. "Except without all the productivity. — Wayne Gladstone

Slowly, painstakingly, like ants, men would make their paths and civilization and their wars once again, only to have it wash away again. — Kiran Desai

The family is an early expedient and in many ways irrational. If the race had developed a special sexless class to be nurses, pedagogues, and slaves, like the workers among ants and bees, then the family would have been unnecessary. Such a division of labor would doubtless have involved evils of its own, but it would have obviated some drags and vexations proper to the family. — George Santayana

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

Imagine if you will, creatures as unlike us as it is possible to be; creatures whose technology dwarfed ours as we dwarf the ants. Creatures whose sole purpose was to wipe out all existing life on Earth and replace it with their own. Beings who did not know the meaning of mercy, who were uninterested in dialogue, with whom one could not even plead. That is what we were up against, Henry. — Stephanie Osborn

But there is one tree that for the footer of the mountain trails is voiceless; it speaks, no doubt, but it speaks only to the austere mountain heads, to the mindful wind and the watching stars. It speaks as men speak to one another and are not heard by the little ants crawling over their boots. This is the Big Tree, the Sequoia. — Mary Austin

I'm on the edge, Neblin, I'm off the edge - I'm over the edge and falling into hell on the other side.'
'Calm down, John,' he said. 'We can work through this. Just tell me where you are.'
'I'm down in the cracks of the sidewalks,' I said, 'in the dirt and in the blood, and the ants are looking up and we're damning you all, Neblin. I'm down in the cracks and I can't get out. — Dan Wells

When I was little, my ambition was to grow up to be a book. Not a writer. People can be killed like ants. Writers are not hard to kill either. But not books: however systematically you try to destroy them, there is always a chance that a copy will survive and continue to enjoy a shelf-life in some corner on an out-of-the-way library somehwere in Reykjavik, Valladolid or Vancouver. — Amos Oz

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

Ants are a curious race — Robert Frost

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

I measure myself Against a tall tree I find that I am much taller, For I reach right up to the sun With my eye; And I reach to the shore of the sea With my ear. Nevertheless, I dislike The way the ants crawl In and out of my shadow. — Wallace Stevens

Take space. It has to be either finite or infinite, yet neither possibility sits well with our intuitions. When I try to imagine a finite universe, I get Marcel Marceau miming on an invisible wall with his hands. Or, after reading about manifolds in books on physics, I see ants creeping over a sphere, or people trapped in a huge inner tube unaware of all the exposure around them. But in all these cases the volume is stubbornly suspended in a larger space, which shouldn't be there at all, but which my minds eye can't help but peek at. — Steven Pinker

Matrona imagined her flush was made of thousands of biting ants, and the soft breeze blew them off her skin as she walked, carrying them back into the wood. — Charlie N. Holmberg

The work on ants has profoundly affected the way I think about humans. — E. O. Wilson

AFTER BEING IN LOVE, THE NEXT RESPONSIBILITY
Turn me like a waterwheel turning a millstone.
Plenty of water, a Living River.
Keep me in one place and scatter the love.
Leaf-moves in wind, straw drawn toward amber,
all parts of the world are in love,
but they do not tell their secrets. Cows grazing
on a sacramental table, ants whispering in Solomon's ear.
Mountains mumbling an echo. Sky, calm.
If the sun were not in love, he would have no brightness,
the side of the hill no grass on it.
The ocean would come to rest somewhere.
Be a lover as they are, that you come to know
you Beloved. Be faithful that you may know
Faith. The other parts of the universe did not accept
the next responsibility of love as you can.
They were afraid they might make a mistake
with it, the inspired knowing
that springs from being in love — Rumi

Whence we see spiders, flies, or ants entombed and preserved forever in amber, a more than royal tomb. — Francis Bacon

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

A wound gives strange dignity to him who bears it. Well men shy from his new and terrible majesty. It is as if the wounded man's hand is upon the curtain which hangs before the revelations of all existence - the meaning of ants, potentates, wars, cities, sunshine, snow, a feather dropped from a bird's wing; and the power of it sheds radiance upon a bloody form, and makes the other men understand sometimes that they are little. His comrades look at him with large eyes thoughtfully. Moreover, they fear vaguely that the weight of a finger upon him might send him headlong, precipitate the tragedy, hurl him at once into the dim, gray unknown.
("An Episode Of War") — Stephen Crane

We could mate. In a year our nestlings would be large enough to mob anyone we like ... Should I begin to court you? Do you like grubs or ants better? ... I will be here. In case you change your mind about mating. — Tamora Pierce

If I have to worry about the ants I crush beneath my feet, I couldn't even walk around — Kentaro Miura

God is a God of galaxies, of storms, of roaring seas and boiling thunder, but He is also the God of bread baking, of a child's smile, of dust motes in the sun. He is who He is, and always shall be. Look around you now. He is speaking always and everywhere. His personality can be seen and known and leaned upon. The sun is belching flares while mountains scrape our sky while ants are milking aphids on their colonial leaves and dolphins are laughing in the surf and wheat is rippling and wind is whipping and a boy is looking into the eyes of a girl and mortals are dying. — N.D. Wilson

I wish I could run away," Rudger told Jersey as they both rushed in and out of various patients' rooms, darting around like little ants. "I can't leave and be on my own though, not right now, anyway."
"Why?" asked Jersey, waving her flashlight in mid-air.
Rudger froze for a second, a regretful haze emanating from his eyes. "It'd break her heart if I left."
"Ain't that normal? For parents to have mixed feelings about their kids growin' up?"
"Not for me, it isn't."
Jersey made a pitying face in his direction. "So, you wanna keep bein' towed around with your mom, livin' in a gross town like Danvers?"
"Is there a choice?"
"Yeah, there sure is. You can run away and try to be a whole person before it's too late, or you can live with mommy dearest forever and turn into Norman Bates. — Rebecca McNutt

As a kid, I lived in a fantasy world. I used to believe ants could talk. Not once did they say thank you. — Willard Wigan

Why do ants alone have parasites whose intoxicating moistures they drink and for whom they will sacrifice even their young? Because as they are the most highly socialized of insects, so their lives are the most intolerable. — Cyril Connolly

Here in Texas, that's not how it works. When we threw ourselves on Slip'N Slides, we were met with a bone-crushingly hard ground that was sparsely covered by grass that had the consistency of old hay. As we slid down the yellow tarp for our three seconds of fun, we'd experience the familiar explosions of pain when previously undiscovered rocks or sticks jabbed into our internal organs. Then we'd slide off the end into fire ants. — Jennifer Fulwiler

We all know about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. It seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for studying the oyster. — Mark Twain

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

From the dawn of agriculture until this very day, billions of humans armed with branches, swatters, shoes and poison sprays have waged relentless war against the diligent ants, furtive roaches, adventurous spiders and misguided beetles that constantly infiltrate the human domicile. For — Yuval Noah Harari

The lancet fluke (Dicrocoelium) infects the brain of ants by taking control and driving them to climb to the top of a blade of grass where they can be eaten by a cow. The ingested fluke then lays eggs in the cow gut. Eventually, the eggs exit the cow, and hungry snails eat the dung (and fluke eggs). The fluke enters the snail's digestive gland and gets excreted in sticky slime full of a seething mass of flukes to be drunk by ants as a source of moisture. — Darrel Ray

Does the Power that runs the universe think us of more importance than we think ants?"
"You forget that an infinite Power must be infinitely little as well as infinitely great. We are neither, therefore there are things too little as well as too great for us to apprehend. To the infinitely little an ant is of as much importance as a mastodon. We are witnessing the birth pangs of a new era--but it will be born a feeble, wailing life like everything else. I am not one of those who expect a new heaven and a new earth as the immediate result of this war. That is not the way God works. But work He does, Miss Oliver, and in the end His purpose will be fulfilled. — L.M. Montgomery

If one looks with a cold eye at the mess man has made of his history, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he has been afflicted by some built-in mental disorder which drives him towards self-destruction. Murder within the species on an individual or collective scale is a phenomenon unknown in the whole animal kingdom, except for man, and a few varieties of ants and rats. — Arthur Koestler

Indeed what reason may not go to Schoole to the wisdome of Bees, Ants, and Spiders? what wise hand teacheth them to doe what reason cannot teach us? ruder heads stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature, Whales, Elephants, Dromidaries and Camels; these I confesse, are the Colossus and Majestick pieces of her hand; but in these narrow Engines there is more curious Mathematicks, and the civilitie of these little Citizens more neatly sets forth the wisdome of their Maker. — Thomas Browne

Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving. — Frederick Buechner

Friends are like ants, they walk into your life unnoticed and take over your life as if its like their own.
But unlike ants they leave behind million smiles, uncountable memories. — Hanif Hassan Barbhuiya

You don't need to blame yourself just because you've hurt someone, just like when you're walking you can't really blame yourself to crush some ants... that's what being stronger ones means. — Sui Ishida

I wiggled and squirmed in my seat as if I had ants in my pants, but in reality it was merely impatience. — A.B. Shepherd

The stinging insects clung to one another and floated in clumps the size of basketballs, the ants on bottom giving their lives to save those on top. They — Judith Richards

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

I had the great idea of using markers to gently color the ants so I could tell them apart, but I learned that this is exactly like somebody trying to gently color on you with a thirty-story building.
Without dwelling on the tragedy, I'd just like to say that I'm deeply sorry to Mr. Purple and the surviving Purple family. — Jim Benton

The immense profundity of thought in vulgar locutions, like holes dug by generations of ants. — Charles Baudelaire

The performance group The Ant Farm redoing JFK's assassination in Dallas was an event that struck a chord with me, especially when one of the members said they'd only intended to do it once, but the Dallas audience insisted they repeat the performance. — Laura Mullen

Anyone who abandon's their children should be hung, by their toenails while awaiting flesh eating ants or some other painful flesh eating hungry creature to consume them. Slowly and painfully ... — A.R. Von

Quinn's First Law of Investing is never to buy anything whose price you can't follow in the newspapers. An investment without a public marketplace attracts the fabulists the way picnics attract ants. Stock brokers and financial planners can tell you anything they want, because no one really knows what's true. The First Corollary to Quinn's First Law states that, even when the price is in the newspapers, you shouldn't buy anything too complex to explain to the average 12-year-old. — Jane Bryant Quinn

Forbear, thou great good husband, little ant. — Richard Lovelace

Red ants that had a sour farty smell when they were squashed. — Arundhati Roy

But hope got in, no matter how hard and fast I tried to stomp it out. Like these tiny fire ants we used to get in Portland. No matter how fast you liked them, there were always more, a steady stream of them, resistant, ever-multiplying.
Maybe, the hope said. Maybe. — Lauren Oliver

Some people are like ants. Give them a warm day and a piece of ground and they start digging. There the similarity ends. Ants keepon digging. Most people don't. They establish contact with the soil, absorb so much vernal vigor that they can't stay in one place, and desert the fork or spade to see how the rhubarb is coming and whether the asparagus is yet in sight. — Hal Borland

I observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. — Henry David Thoreau

Curiosity restores is a state of heightened awareness. Culturally, this has been considered a child's activity. By the time we're grown, we're supposed to know enough not to get bogged down in life's miraculous detail. But the spiritual journey reactivates our sense of miracle and invites us to pause again, squatting over the sidewalk cracks, to ponder the lives of ants and stars. — Christina Baldwin

I took two or three months and I came up with a reason that I thought was enough and I went with it: if there is a God he's definitely not benevolent. We should mean less to him than ants. And if there is a God or there are gods they would value, more than anything, free will. — Tarsem Singh

The general, unable to control his irritation, will launch his men to the assault like swarming ants, with the result that one-third of his men are slain, while the town still remains untaken. Such are the disastrous effects of a siege. — Sun Tzu

Great God of the Ants, thou hast granted victory to thy servants. I appoint thee honorary Colonel. — Karel Capek

Paraphrased: When Chuang Tzu was about to die, his disciples began planning a splendid funeral. However some disciples expressed concern that given a particular arrangement, birds and kites would eat his remains. Chuang Tzu replied, Well, above ground I shall be eaten by crows and kites, below it by ants and worms. What do you have against birds? — Zhuangzi

It's better to keep grief inside. Grief inside works like bees or ants, building curious and perfect structures, complicating you. Grief outside means you want something from someone, and chances are good you won't get it. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

The iron rule of nature is: you get what you reward for.
If you want ants to come, you put sugar on the floor. — Charlie Munger

When I was little, I would burn ants with a magnifying glass. But now that I'm older, I'm more of a cat guy. — Anthony Jeselnik

I grew up in airports and on air bases. I know what flying and airports can be. And most airports make me feel like we're about three per cent better than ants. Especially U.S. airports. They're zoos. All civility is gone. — Douglas Coupland

The people are so small, they look like ants (although they're Walmart customers, so they look like obese ants). — Andrew Shaffer

I do not see why we should not be as just to an ant as to a human being. — Charles Kingsley

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

The guitar. Rubbing the gentle polish
On Every smooth contour.
On the lap. Knowing every curve
As the light shines from it.

On stage a planned metamorphosis
Takes places as the hours go by and the
Space is transformed to a concert hall.
The energetic nemesis has struck.

The risers are transformed into a stage
And black boxes turned into powerful
Pieces of sound equipment.
The spring is taut.

Backstage while pandemonium
Sweeps the hall and people
Crowd the arena as ants flow to a cake.

The stage is set, the
Instruments tuned and placed.
The musicians work out last minute
Kinks as the lights dim.

An intense force hits the spectators.
Energy is released in every form.
A power rage beyond comprehension. — David Morrell

Weak or wicked, great or small, in men and in animal, resides the same omnipresent, omniscient soul. The difference is not in the soul, but in the manifestation. Between me and the smallest animal the difference is only of manifestation, but as a principle he is the same as I am, he is my brother, he has the same soul as I have. This is the principle of Universal Brotherhood of man with one another, with all life down to the little ants. — Swami Vivekananda

What big eyes you have. Eyes of an incomparable luminosity, the numinous phosphorescence of the eyes of lycanthropes. The gelid green of your eyes fixes my reflective face; It is a preservative, like a green liquid amber; it catches me. I am afraid I will be trapped in it for ever like the poor little ants and flies that stuck their feet in resin before the sea covered the Baltic. He winds me into the circle of his eye on a reel of birdsong. There is a black hole in the middle of both your eyes; it is their still centre, looking there makes me giddy, as if I might fall into it. — Angela Carter

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

No amphibious attack in history has approached this one in size. Along miles of coastline there were hundreds of vessels and small boats afloat and ant-like files of advancing troops ashore. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Ants are a terrific analogy for the route to success. They will go over, under, around, or through whatever gets in their way. They never stop moving, and neither should you. Take the word impossible and turn it into I'm Possible. — Honoree Corder

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

I want you to think back to when you were a kid. Remember the day you learned you could burn ants with a magnifying glass? Oh, what a great day that was! You got to be God. You decided who lived, who died. I must've burned ants for an hour, just laughing. Then I saw one on my arm. Let me tell you something, when you burn yourself with a magnifying glass, you're on your own. You can't even tell your mom, because she gives that face, Oh, he is that stupid. — Bill Engvall

But if the ants are not despondent because they have failed to produce a new social invention or convention in 65 million years, why should we be discouraged because some of our institutions and castes have not been able to evolve a new idea in the past fifty centuries? — William Morton Wheeler

Ants under the skin. As Rhage transferred his weight from one shitkicker to the other, he felt like his bloodstream had come to a soft boil and the bubbles were tickling the underside of every fucking square inch of his flesh. — J.R. Ward

But the remarkable thing about the beetles was their sensitivity to all the grammar and directives and slogans and even unstated desires of the ant world, which they learned to manipulate. They first memorized the proper antenna-vibration and foreleg-tap which the ants themselves used to request food. The poor workers, busy going here and there and back again all day and never getting a chance to think, automatically assumed that these fearsome strangers had been authorized by the Central Committee since they knew the password, and so they regurgitated a drop or two of fruit juice on cue, much the same as when one is traveling across Europe or Asia on the train and a person in uniform requests one's passport, one's ticket, takes them away, and comes back, or else does not come back, having sold them; a badge and a superior manner can obtain anything in this world. — William T. Vollmann

The instincts of the ant are very unimportant, considered as the ants; but the moment a ray of relation is seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty heart, then all its habits, even that said to be recently observed, that it never sleeps, become sublime. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The ants say: aren't we all bleeding a little? — A.S. King

All I could think was that grandfathers were supposed to die in beds, in hushed places humming with machines, not in heaps on the sodden reeking ground with ants marching over them, a brass letter opener clutched in one trembling hand. — Ransom Riggs

The life of an ant and the life of my child should be accorded equal respect. — Wayne Pacelle

How can you have boundaries if you fly? Those ants of yours - and the humans too - would have to stop fighting in the end, if they took to the air." "I like fighting," said the Wart. "It is knightly." "Because you're a baby. — T.H. White

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

Animists thought that humans were just one of many creatures inhabiting the world. Polytheists, on the other hand, increasingly saw the world as a reflection of the relationship between gods and humans. Our prayers, our sacrifices, our sins and our good deeds determined the fate of the entire ecosystem. A terrible flood might wipe out billions of ants, grasshoppers, turtles, antelopes, giraffes and elephants, just because a few stupid Sapiens made the gods angry. Polytheism thereby exalted not only the status of the gods, but also that of humankind. — Yuval Noah Harari

When many work together for a goal, Great things may be accomplished. It is said a lion cub was killed By a single colony of ants. — Saskya Pandita

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about? — Henry David Thoreau

You've made vampire spiders?"
Now it was her turn to wonder if her was serious. He should know that was't a possibility.
"They don't transform, just as animals and insects don't if they drink vampire blood"
"Can you imagine vampire mosquitoes? Or immortal, blood-sucking ants who make you feel all sexy when they bite — Meljean Brook

Every time a significant discovery is being made one sets in motion a tremendous activity in laboratories and industrial enterprises throughout the world. It is like the ant who suddenly finds food and walks back to the anthill while sending out material called food attracting substance. The other ants follow the path immediately in order to benefit from the finding and continue to do so as long as the supply is rich. — Bengt I. Samuelsson

Cicala to cicala is dear, and ant to ant, and hawks to hawks, but to me the muse and song. — Theocritus

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

Life is priceless
even to an ant — Xiaobo Liu

The gentle rustle of armies crawling the planet like ants. Anybody with any sense knows what's coming. — Vanessa Veselka

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

Myrmecophaga jubata: The anteater. The existence of this predator demonstrates that thinking 71 percent of the time, as ants do, won't prevent you from being eaten. Thinking less than that, as humans do, will almost guarantee it. — John Ralston Saul

My wife is a lovely leathery green, the blue-tongued lizard said;
Her eyes are as red as bulldog ants, lurking in holes in her head;
Her body is made of the speckled grass, a violet grows on her tongue,
And I could watch her for fifty years if nobody blundered along. — Douglas Stewart

She raised a little mountain for the ants to climb over. She reduced them to a frenzy of indecision by this interference in their cosmogony. Some ran this way, others that. — Virginia Woolf

People are not ants or bees. We do not reason or love or live or die collectively. — P. J. O'Rourke