“It is a miserable thing to live in suspense; it is the life of the spider.”

Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.

When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.

And surely one of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid.

It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it.

You cannot reason a person out of something they were not reasoned into.

Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.

This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.

Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.

Argument is the worst sort of conversation.

There’s none so blind as they that won’t see.

Live every day as your last, because one of these days, it will be.

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.

Every dog must have his day.

I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are as slaves.

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.

If we were to wipe out insects alone on this planet, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Within a few months.

Ants make up two-thirds of the biomass of all the insects. There are millions of species of organisms and we know almost nothing about them.

To still others, who again have their human prototypes, it means a struggle, more or less fierce, to keep soul and body together; while to many insect forms, it means death.

we will disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by the insect.

I always liked the idea that America is a big facade. We are all insects crawling across on the shiny hood of a Cadillac. We’re all looking at the wrapping. But we won’t tear the wrapping to see what lies beneath.

I think I got people confidence because I was not looking at them like insects that I would film.

An astounding panoply of toxic substances, venomous creatures, poison plants, animals and insects, deleterious environments, virulent pathogens, infectious agents, noxious gases, and combustible chemicals were marshalled to defeat foes.

In summer the empire of insects spreads.