Weevil Quotes & Sayings

You, too, are cut out for failure; not that you'd fight the world. You'd let it chew you up and spit you out, and you'd lie there wondering what was wrong. Because you'd always expect the world to be something it wasn't, something it had no wish to be. The weevil in the cotton, the worm in the beanstalk, the borer in the corn. You couldn't face them, and you couldn't fight them; because you're too weak, and you're too strong. And you have no place to go in the world. — John Edward Williams

The frost which kills the harvest of a year saves the harvest of a century, by destroying the weevil or the locust. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The two palm worms are brought in separate bowls, still alive, wriggling fiercely in a bath of turpentine-colored fish sauce with a few slivers of chili. The glossy brown heads of the grubs, the larvae of a weevil that infests palm trees, glisten like popcorn seeds; the wriggling abdomens have pale rubbery ridges. The owner of the restaurant, chubby and affable, comes out to instruct Nhat and me: we are to grasp the heads, pull off the fat white bodies with our teeth, and discard the heads, taking care that the larvae do not nip our tongues with their formidable pincers in the process. Biting down on squirming larvae seems barbaric, but my brain is starting to swim due to hunger, and the fish sauce is muskily aromatic. How bad could their fat glistening bodies taste? And am I not a direct descendant of insectivores, albeit roughly 100 million years removed? I — Stephen Le

Each gray hair still seemed like a weevil in a flower bed. — Jess Walter

He who helps destroy the boll-weevil has done as constructive work as he who plants the seed. — Rupert Hughes

Two weevils crept from the crumbs. 'You see those weevils, Stephen?' said Jack solemnly.
I do.'
Which would you choose?'
There is not a scrap of difference. Arcades ambo. They are the same species of curculio, and there is nothing to choose between them.'
But suppose you had to choose?'
Then I should choose the right-hand weevil; it has a perceptible advantage in both length and breadth.'
There I have you,' cried Jack. 'You are bit - you are completely dished. Don't you know that in the Navy you must always choose the lesser of two weevils? Oh ha, ha, ha, ha! — Patrick O'Brian

here he dug in his pockets and produced a thimble, a root, two empty tin cans, three Indian arrowheads, an apple peeler, a dried-up boll weevil, and a bent pocketknife. — James McBride

Some Saturday mornings, as soon as the mountains had bottled up the last cheerful sound of Bob and the truck, I, feeling like a cross between a boll weevil and a slut, took a large cup of hot coffee, a hot-water bottle, a cigarette and a magazine and WENT BACK TO BED. Then, from six-thirty until nine or so, I luxuriated in breaking the old mountain tradition that a decent woman is in bed only between the hours of seven pm and four am unless she is in labor or dead. — Betty MacDonald

They were going crazy in Kansas. People were up to 9 p.m. I think that was the greatest thing to happen to Kansas since the eradication of the boll weevil. — Jay Leno

A chemical weevil," said Jesper, "But Wylan still hasn't named it. My vote is for the Wyvil."
"That's terrible," said Wylan.
"It's brilliant," Jesper winked. "Just like you. — Leigh Bardugo

There wasn't any Republicans in Washington's day. No Republicans, no Boll Weevil, no income tax, no cover charge, no disarmament conference, no luncheon clubs, no stop lights, no static, no head winds. My Lord, living in those days, who wouldn't be great? — Will Rogers

You'd be as rich as kings if you could find it, and you know it's here, and you stand there skulking. There wasn't one of you dared face Bill, and I did it
a blind man! And I'm to lose my chance for you! I'm to be a poor, crawling beggar, sponging for rum, when I might be rolling in a coach! If you had the pluck of a weevil in a biscuit you would catch them still. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Permanence of instinct must go with permanence of form ... The history of the present must teach us the history of the past.
[Referring to studying fossil remains of the weevil, largely unchanged to the present day.] — Jean-Henri Fabre

Jaidee studies the general's desk. "I wasn't aware that the Environment Ministry only inspected cargo at others' convenience."
"I am trying to reason with you. My hands are full with tigers: blister rust, weevil, the coal war, Trade Ministry infiltrators, yellow cards, greenhouse quotas, fa' gan outbreaks ... And yet you choose to add another."
Jaidee looks up. "Who is it?"
"What do you mean?"
"Who is so angry that you're pissing your pants this way? Coming to ask me not to fight? It's Trade, yes? Someone in the Trade Ministry has you by the balls."
Pracha doesn't say anything for a moment. "I don't know who it is. Better that you don't know, either. What you do not know, you cannot fight." He slides a card across the desk. "This arrived today, under my door." His eyes lock on Jaidee so that Jaidee cannot look away. "Right here in the office. Inside the compound, you understand? We are completely infiltrated."
Jaidee turns over the card. — Paolo Bacigalupi