Honey And The Bee Quotes & Sayings

Some men, when they do you a kindness, at once demand the payment of gratitude from you; others are more modest than this. However, they remember the favor, and look upon you as their debtor in a manner. A third sort shall scarce know what they have done. These are much like a vine, which is satisfied by being fruitful in its kind, and bears a bunch of grapes without expecting any thanks for it. A fleet horse or greyhound do not make a noise when they have done well, nor a bee neither when she has made a little honey. And thus a man that has done a kindness never proclaims it, but does another as soon as he can, just like a vine that bears again the next season. Now we should imitate those who are so obliging as hardly to reflect on their beneficence (v. 6). — Marcus Aurelius

A bird in the boughs sang "June,"
And "June" hummed a bee
In a Bacchic glee
As he tumbled over and over
Drunk with the honey-dew. — Clinton Scollard

The spider-mind acquires a faculty of memory, and, with it, a singular skill of analysis and synthesis, taking apart and putting together in different relations the meshes of its trap. Man had in the beginning no power of analysis or synthesis approaching that of the spider, or even of the honey-bee; but he had acute sensibility to the higher forces. — Henry Adams

Rosanne Daryl Thomas's tale of her enchantment by bees is a delight to read. It also contains close observations of the natural world, tales of failure and triumph with the hives, and a stellar cast of characters that includes her daughter, their cats, the hapless Farmer Tom, Pete the crossing guard, and, most important, the Bee Master. Every word tastes sweet as honey. — Janet Lembke

This (presidential) system will not bear any resemblance to dictatorships under the same name in Africa and Asia, (It) will be unique to Turkey, it will be like a bee making honey, taking something from every flower and giving us a taste of a truly different honey. — Recep Tayyip Erdogan

And pray, who are you?"
Said the Violet blue
To the Bee, with surprise,
At his wonderful size,
In her eyeglass of dew.
"I, madam," quoth he,
"Am a publican Bee,
Collecting the tax
Of honey and wax.
Have you nothing for me? — John B. Tabb

Just as the queen bee, the highest-ranking, peerless creature of her hive, is surrounded by lowly drones to please her, whereas the workers produce honey, the same way is the one who sits on the throne an equal only to himself, and no one's companion. — Franz Grillparzer

It was like a great bee come home from some field where the honey is full of poison wildness, of insanity and nightmare, its body crammed with that over-rich nectar and now it was sleeping the evil out of itself. — Ray Bradbury

An intellectual instinct which extracts the essence from the phenomena of life, as a bee sucks honey from a flower. In addition to study and reflections, life itself serves as a source. — Carl Von Clausewitz

Let us not go hurrying about and collecting honey, bee-like buzzing here and there for a knowledge of what is not to be arrived at, but let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive, budding patiently under the eye of Apollo, and taking hints from every noble insect that favours us with a visit - sap will be given us for meat and dew for drink. — John Keats

So long as the bee is outside the petals of the lily, and has not tasted the sweetness of its honey, it hovers around the flower emitting the buzzing sound; but when it is inside the flower, it noiselessly drinks the nectar. So long as a man quarrels and disputes about doctrines and dogmas, he has not tasted the nectar of true faith; when he has tasted it, he becomes quiet and full of peace. — Ramakrishna

How to extract its honey from the flower of the world. That is my everyday business. I am as busy as a bee about it. I ramble over fields on that errand and am never so happy as when I feel myself heavy with honey and wax. I am like a bee searching the livelong day for the sweets of nature. — Henry David Thoreau

What drew her into O'Riley's like a bee to honey was the six-foot, broad-shouldered, dark eyes, dark smile of Finn O'Riley himself. — Jill Shalvis

No living creature, not even man, has achieved, in the centre of his sphere, what the bee has achieved in her own: and were some one from another world to descend and ask of the earth the most perfect creation of the logic of life, we should needs have to offer the humble comb of honey. — Maurice Maeterlinck

Were I to be the founder of a new sect, I would call them Apiarians, and, after the example of the bee, advise them to extract the honey of every sect. My fundamental principle would be ... that we are to be saved by our good works which are within our power, and not by our faith which is not within our power. — Thomas Jefferson

Mantova
The first thing I saw in the morning
Was a huge golden bee ploughing
His burly right shoulder into the belly
Of a sleek yellow pear
Low on a bough.
Before he could find that sudden black honey
That squirms around in there
Inside the seed, the tree could not bear any more.
The pear fell to the ground,
With the bee still half alive
Inside its body.
He would have died had I not knelt down
And sliced the pear gently
A little more open.
The bee shuddered, and returned.
Maybe I should have left him a lone there
Drowning in his own delight.
The best days are the first
To flee. — Richard Wilbur

In Spain, hilly terrain and antiquated planting and harvest practices keep farmers from retrieving more than about 100 pounds [of almonds] per acre. Growers in the Central Valley, by contrast can expect up to 3000 pounds an acre. But for all their sophisticated strategies to increase yield and profitability, almond growers still have one major problem - pollination. Unless a bird or insect brings the pollen from flower to flower, even the most state-of-the-art orchard won't grow enough nuts. An almond grower who depends on wind and a few volunteer pollinators in this desert of cultivation can expect only 40 pounds of almonds per acre. If he imports honey bees, the average yield is 2,400 pounds per acre, as much as 3,000 in more densely planted orchards. To build an almond, it takes a bee. — Hannah Nordhaus

The bee collects honey from flowers in such a way as to do the least damage or destruction to them, and he leaves them whole, undamaged and fresh, just as he found them. — Saint Francis De Sales

There were so many miracles at work: that a blossom might become a peach, that a bee could make honey in its thorax, that rain might someday fall. I thought then about the seasons changing, and in the gray of night I could almost will myself to see the azure sky, the gold of the maple leaves, the crimson of the ripe apples, the hoarfrost on the grass. — Jane Hamilton

To a lesser extent (they like) the whites and reds, but blues, yellows and oranges are the main bee flowers. Although there are very good white bee flowers - white sweet clover is the best honey plant in the world. — Chip Taylor

The little bee returns with evening's gloom, To join her comrades in the braided hive, Where, housed beside their might honey-comb, They dream their polity shall long survive. — Charles Tennyson Turner

I don't even get the term, "the birds and the bees".
How does that properly teach a kid about sex? You never see a pigeon railing a
dove or a honey bee sticking it to a bumble bee. — Tara Sivec

And now you ask in your heart, 'How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?'
Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.
*

People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees. — Kahlil Gibran

[I]t is not hasty reading
but serious meditating upon holy and heavenly truths, that make them prove sweet and profitable to the soul. It is not the bee's touching of the flower, which gathers honey
but her abiding for a time upon the flower, which draws out the sweet. It is not he who reads most
but he who meditates most, who will prove the choicest, sweetest, wisest and strongest Christian. — Thomas Brooks

If a queen bee were crossed with a Friesian bull, would not the land flow with milk and honey? — Oliver St. John

The bee, though it finds every rose has a thorn, comes back loaded with honey from his rambles; and why should not other tourists do the same? — Thomas Chandler Haliburton

Boy I need a hug (boy I need a hug)
'Cause my heart stops without you
There's something about you — Owl City

...take a page from the life of the little bee. People as a rule think that it gets honey right from the flower. They are mistaken. All it gets is a little sweet water. But it takes that water, retires, adds something to it from itself, and by a process of its own makes it into honey...go to the Bible as the bee to the flower, and 'read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest'. Thus, through a process of his own, he is to bring forth the real spiritual honey... — Hiram Alfred Cody

I will arise and go now,
And go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there,
Of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there,
A hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there,
For peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning
To where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer,
And noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings

I will arise and go now,
For always night and day
I hear lake water lapping
With low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway
Or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core. — W.B.Yeats

There was the Bennett Cocktail (gin, lime juice, bitters), the Bee's Knees (gin, honey, lemon juice), the Gin Fizz (gin, lemon juice, sugar, seltzer water), and the Southside (lemon juice, sugar syrup, mint leaves, gin, seltzer water). — Deborah Blum

They might ignore me immediately.
In my moon suit and funeral veil.
I am no source of honey
So why should they turn on me?
Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free. — Sylvia Plath

Thomas Edison reads not for entertainment but to increase his store of knowledge. He sucks in information as eagerly as the bee sucks honey from flowers. The whole world, so to speak, pours its wisdom into his mind. He regards it as a criminal waste of time to go through the slow and painful ordeal of ascertaining things for one's self if these same things have already been ascertained and made available by others. In Edison's mind knowledge is power. — B.C. Forbes

Honey is sweet, "and so is knowledge, but knowledge is like the bee that made that sweet honey, you have to chase it through the pages of a book." (taken from "Thank you, Mr. Falker" ) — Patricia Polacco

O Spirit of the Summertime! Bring back the roses to the dells; The swallow from her distant clime, The honey-bee from drowsy cells. Bring back the friendship of the sun; The gilded evenings, calm and late, When merry children homeward run, And peeping stars bid lovers wait. Bring back the singing; and the scent Of meadowlands at dewy prime;- Oh, bring again my heart's content, Thou Spirit of the Summertime! — William Allingham

Revered as God's servants, the bees they lure provide mead and honey for the table and beeswax candles for church services, which is why many churches planted linden trees in their courtyards. The bee-church connection became so strong that once, at the turn of the fifteenth century, the villagers of Mazowsze passed a law condemning honey thieves and hive vandals — Diane Ackerman

Wehehehehell, if it isn't Ollie-Ollie-oxidant-free ... "
You can take ... all the tea in China ... put it in a big brown ... bag for me.
He's as sweet as tupelo honey; he's an angel of the first degree.
Men with insight ... men in granite ... knights in armor bent on ... chivalry.
He's as sweet as ... tupelo honey; just like honey, baby ... from the bee."
=> For those who read and liked "When Irish eyes are sparkling"
Can i have a musician here? — Tom Collins

These great improvements of modern times are blessings or curses on us, just in the same ratio as the mental, moral, and religious rule over the animal; or the animal propensities of our nature predominate over the intellectual and moral. The spider elaborates poison from the same flower, in which the bee finds materials out of which she manufactures honey. — Harriot Kezia Hunt

Have you had much luck tonight?" she asked.
His gaze slipped to the neat stacks of coins in front of her. "No' as much as ye, my lady."
She let her own stare trail across her piles of winnings. Shame sizzled against her cheeks.,,,
"Perhaps I'm lucky tonight myself," he said.
The silky undertone in his voice crept up her back like the skilled swipe of a musician's fingers strumming a harp.
"What do you mean?" Of course she knew what he meant, but the glint of flirtation in his eye begged her to prompt him for the compliment.
A golden dollop of honey dribbled to lure the bee.
And she buzzed ever closer.
He pulled his freshly dealt cards toward him. "Perhaps I'm lucky tonight because I've met ye. — Madeline Martin

It is not the bee's touching on the flowers that gathers the honey, but her abiding for a time upon them, and drawing out the sweet. — Joseph Hall

Like the bee gathering honey from the different flowers, the wise person
accepts the essence of the different scriptures and sees only the good in all religions. — Mahatma Gandhi

I go to books and to nature as the bee goes to a flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey. — John Burroughs

Come beloved, and sit at the gate of Nothingness, God will bring you bread without the taste of bread, Sweetness without the honey or the bee, And when the future and past are dissolved There will only be you, lying senseless like a lute On the breast of God. - Rumi — Ian Gawler

Behold! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that has gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to take it from me. I wish to spread it and bestow it, until the wise have once more become joyous in their folly, and the poor happy in their riches. — Friedrich Nietzsche

When the bee has gathered the dew of heaven and the earth's sweetest nectar from the flowers, it turns it into honey, then hastens to its hive. In the same way, the priest, having taken from the altar the Son of God (who is as the dew from heaven, and true son of Mary, flower of our humanity), gives him to you as delicious food. — Saint Francis De Sales

Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core. — W.B.Yeats

Knowing that it is the earth that we tread, we learn to tread carefully, lest it be rent open. Realizing that it is the heavens that hang above us, we come to fear the echoing thunderbolt. The world demands that we battle with others for the sake of our own reputation, and so we undergo the sufferings bred of illusion. While we live in this world with its daily business, forced to walk the tightrope of profit and loss, true love is an empty thing, and the wealth before our eyes mere dust. The reputation we grasp at, the glory that we seize, is surely like the honey that the cunning bee will seem sweetly to brew only to leave his sting within it as he flies. What we call pleasure in fact contains all suffering, since it arises from attachment. Only thanks to the existence of the poet and the painter are we able to imbibe the essence of this dualistic world, to taste the purity of its very bones and marrow. — Soseki Natsume

I climbed into the honey wagon with my hair uncombed, with May handing me buttered toast and orange juice through the window and Rosaleen sticking in thermoses of water, both of them practically running alongside the truck while August rolled out of the driveway. I felt like the Red Cross springing to action to save the bee queendom. — Sue Monk Kidd

Sometimes the buzz of reading about others eating comes from the voyeuristic thrill of seeing how the other half lives: the gold leaf and truffles or - in the case of Trimalchio's feast in Petronius' 'Satyricon' - the dormice and honey. — Bee Wilson

Now summer is in flower and natures hum
Is never silent round her sultry bloom
Insects as small as dust are never done
Wi' glittering dance and reeling in the sun
And green wood fly and blossom haunting bee
Are never weary of their melody
Round field hedge now flowers in full glory twine
Large bindweed bells wild hop and streakd woodbine
That lift athirst their slender throated flowers
Agape for dew falls and for honey showers
These round each bush in sweet disorder run
And spread their wild hues to the sultry sun. — John Clare

I dreamt
marvellous error!
that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures. — Antonio Machado

Flies can be sitting in a garden and completely ignore the beautiful flowers around them. Instead they'll go right for the rotting banana peel or piece of trash. Bees, on the other hand, could be sitting in a room full of trash and find the tiniest speck of fruit or honey to land on. Don't be a fly. Become a bee and stay a bee. Look for the good in every circumstance, even the most horrible and disgusting places. There's always some honey to land on. — Marilyn Grey

When you see honey in the bush and there are no sign of bees, flee!! for its all but a trap — Ikechukwu Izuakor

Droughts especially appear to have accompanied the spirits of the dead in bee-form, and for this reason the honey offering was almost always customary in rain-magic, and the power of predicting rain was attributed to the bee. — Hilda M. Ransome

If, for example, a drone bee in a hive has decided to lay down on its brothers and only do a half job, does Mother Nature agree and find a part time work for the special bee? She does not. She impresses the other bees, who are working hard to collect the honey and fill the hive, to send their soldiers after the drone. It is politely marched outside and stung to death. Nature destroys a lazy bee. — Raymond Holliwell

Man had in the beginning no power of analysis or synthesis approaching that of the spider, or even of the honey-bee; he had acute sensibility to the higher forces. Fire taught him secrets that no other animal could learn; running water probably taught him even more, especially in his first lessons of mechanics; the animals helped to educate him, trusting themselves into his hands merely for the sake of their food, and carrying his burdens or supplying his clothing; the grasses and grains were academies of study. — Henry Adams

326. Excessive reading does not make us smarter. Some people simply
"devour" books. They do it without the necessary intervals of thought, which are necessary in order to "digest," to process what has been read, to absorb and comprehend it. When people of that kind speak, pieces of Hegel, Heidegger and Marx come out raw, unprocessed. Reading requires personal contribution as much
as a bee requires "inner" work, as well as time, to transform pollen into honey. — Alija Izetbegovic

For the bee, honey is the ultimate reality. It represents the fulfillment of her life mission, the triumph over her enemies, the continuity of the hive, the justification for working herself to death. Honey is to bees what money in the bank is to people - a measure of prosperity and well-being. But there is nothing abstract or symbolic about honey, as there is about money, which has no intrinsic value. There is more real wealth in a pound of honey, or a load of manure for that matter, than all the currency in the world. We often destroy the world's real wealth to create an illusion of wealth, confusing symbol and substance. - William Longgood, The Queen Must Die — Susan Wiggs

The squirrel hoards nuts and the bee gathers honey, without knowing what they do, and they are thus provided for without selfishness or disgrace. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best honey comes from a source you know, and is processed without heat. Raw, unfiltered honey retains its royal jelly, bee pollen and propolis - three major sources of antioxidants, vitamins and minerals. 1 cup of locally produced, raw organic honey 1 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice Additional water, about 2 cups 2-½ cups water Ice cubes or crushed ice 1 tablespoon dried culinary lavender Combine honey and 2-½ cups of water in a saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the honey. When the mixture reaches a boil, stir in the lavender and remove from heat. Let the mixture steep for 20 minutes. Strain the lavender from the liquid, then add the fresh lemon juice and an additional 2 cups of water. Use sparkling water if you wish. Pour into glasses full of ice and serve, garnished with a sprig of lavender or mint. [Source: Original] — Susan Wiggs

Once upon a time there was a bear and a bee who lived in a wood and were the best of friends. All summer long the bee collected nectar from morning to night while the bear lay on his back basking in the long grass. When winter came the bear realised he had nothing to eat and thought to himself 'I hope that busy little bee will share some of his honey with me.' But the bee was nowhere to be found - he had died of a stress induced coronary disease. — Banksy

So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand, it's bee backwash. — Alton Brown

Reading Myself
Like thousands I took just pride and more than just,
struck matches that brought my blood to a boil;
I memorized the tricks to set the river on fire
somehow never wrote something to go back to.
Can I suppose I am finished with wax flowers
and have earned my grass on the minor slopes of Parnassus ...
No honeycomb is built without a bee
adding circle to circle, cell to cell,
the wax and honey of a mausoleum
this round dome proves its maker is alive;
the corpse of the insect lives embalmed in honey,
prays that its perishable work live long
enough for the sweet tooth bear to desecrate
this open book..my open coffin — Robert Lowell

It is the honey which makes us cruel enough to ignore the death of a bee — Munia Khan