Quotes: Bats. Beauty. Bees. Beginnings. Belief.

The bold-face print is either an interpretation of the quote or the quote without interpretation.

Bats
Bats 172 Visualizing bats. "The bats are fluttery, shadowy; they trick the eye, deceive the watcher, as they swoop into sight and vanish utterly…play hide and seek with the darkness." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Beauty
Beauty 747 Beauty is for beauty's sake. "There is still beauty of earth, sea, and sky, for beauty’s sake." Hawthorne: “The New Adam and Eve”

Beauty 826 "But beauty is never a delusion…." Hawthorne: “Buds and Bird-Voices”

Beauty 827 "The beautiful should live forever…." Hawthorne: “Buds and Bird-Voices”

Beauty 914 Who understands beauty? "Only get rid altogether of your nonsensical trash about the beautiful—which I or nobody else, nor yourself to boot, could never understand—only free yourself of that, and your success in life is as sure as daylight." Hawthorne: “The Artist of the Beautiful”

Beauty 916 The artifact only symbolizes the idea of beauty. "But would the beautiful idea ever be yielded to his hand, like the butterfly that symbolized it?" Hawthorne: “The Artist of the Beautiful”

Beauty 133 "Beauty is pride." Lope de Vega. Spanish. Dictionary of Foreign Terms

Beauty 151 "Beauty is a flower, fame a breath." Latin. Dictionary of Foreign Terms

Bees
Bees 613 Absorbed in the life of bees. "He kept bees, and told me he loved to sit for whole hours by the hives, watching the labors of the insects, and soothed by the hum with which they filled the air." Hawthorne: “Jonathan Cilley”

Bees 162 Bumblebees. "Behold the bumblebee, that big, improbable black and gold insect that shouldn’t be able to fly but does…." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Bees 163 "Man could do worse than ponder the bumblebees, especially on a sunny June afternoon." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Beginnings
Beginnings 17 "Every beginning is cheerful." Goethe. Ger. Dictionary of Foreign Terms

Belief
Belief 1291 Tame a wild creature and it loves you. "Thus it always is with winged horses, and with all such wild and solitary creatures; if you can catch and overcome them, it is the surest way to win their love." “The Chimera” Hawthorne’s The Wonder Book for Boys and Girls

Belief 31 It is folly to believe what is obviously not true, but most of us do it. "The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true…the chief occupation of mankind. H. L. Mencken. Portable Curmudgeon.

Belief 199 No system will control human beliefs. "…that human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barriers of a system." George Eliot, Silas Marner.

Belief 214 Turn away a blessing and it is theirs who find it. Silas: "God gave her to me because you turned your back upon her, and He looks upon her as mine…when a man turns a blessing from his door, it falls to them as take in." George Eliot, Silas Marner.

Belief, doubt 8 "The believer is happy; the doubter is wise." Hungarian proverb. Portable Curmudgeon.

Belief, doubt 8 Men become civilized because they doubt rather than believe. "Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt." H. L. Mencken. Portable Curmudgeon.