The Swarm Quotes

#1. That which is not good for the swarm, neither is it good for the bee.

Marcus Aurelius

#2. I thought: yes, Lila is right, the beauty of things is a trick, the sky is the throne of fear; I'm alive, now, here, ten steps from the water, and it is not beautiful, it's terrifying; along with this beach, the sea, the swarm of animal forms, I am part of the universal terror.

Elena Ferrante

#3. It would have been nice to get this attention in any other context. WikiLeaks has kicked the hornet's nest, and the swarm is headed towards us.

Dominic Frisby

#4. There are two sides to life for every individual: a personal life, in which his freedom exists in proportion to the abstract nature of his interests, and an elemental life within the swarm of humanity, in which a man inevitably follows laws laid down for him.

Leo Tolstoy

#5. To be cured, we must rise from our graves and throw off the cerements of the dead. Nobody can do it for another - it is a private affair which is best done collectively. We must die as egos and be born again in the swarm, not separated and self-hypnotized, but individual and related.

Henry Miller

#6. Raffe is warm and strong and he feels like home. Our faces inch closer as the swarm shifts. For a moment, I can feel his breath feathering my cheek.

Susan Ee

#7. Here's what's terrifying about Ebola. Ebola is invisible. It's a monster without a face. With the science that we have now, we can perceive Ebola as being not one thing but as a swarm, and the swarm is moving through the human population and expanding its numbers. It has the qualities of a monster.

Richard Preston

#8. A beguiling lady doesn't take after the swarm. She is herself.

Loretta Young

#9. What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.

Marcus Aurelius

#10. But you, divine poet, you sang on till the end as the swarm of rejected maenads attacked you, shrieking, you overpowered their noise with harmony, and from pure destruction arose your transfigured song.

Rainer Maria Rilke

#11. The wand ricocheted through the swarm, thumping six, seven, eight of the little monsters before returning to Carter's hand.
"Not bad," I said. "Keep it up!

Rick Riordan

#12. For like a poisonous breath over the fields, like a mass of locusts over Egypt, so the swarm of excuses is a general plaque, a ruinous infection among men, that eats off the sprouts of the Eternal.

Soren Kierkegaard

#13. Fairies, arouse! Mix with your song Harplet and pipe, Thrilling and clear, Swarm on the boughs! Chant in a throng! Morning is ripe, Waiting to hear.

William Allingham

#14. History, that is, the unconscious, common, swarm life of mankind uses every moment of the life of kings as an instrument for its own ends

Leo Tolstoy

#15. On one part of the footpath where a thin trickle of water from a small spring kept it damp, I found ... a swarm of ... small, blue butterflies drinking the water. ... I only went that way on sunny days and each time the dense, blue swarm was there, and each time it was a holiday.

Hermann Hesse

#16. That which the enemy meant to destroy through trafficking, I will raise up as an unstoppable army in the days ahead, for that generation will be My generation! I call you, 'My Army that is Unstoppable!' I call you, 'My Kingdom Swarm,' and you shall invade the kingdoms of the earth.

Chuck Pierce

#17. I do not need love now, I needed it while I was down and the majority of the faces that are showing up, were not anywhere to be found when I really needed their support. Now they swarm like flies.

D. Hunter

#18. The ghosts swarm. They speak as one person. Each has left something undone.

Rae Armantrout

#19. Chasing an errant swarm of bees is nothing to following a naked lunatic when the fit of escaping is upon him!

Bram Stoker

#20. You can FEEL the wave of emotion online when something is about to go viral, good or bad. A scientist I met once mathematically compared internet behavior to swarm behavior seen in starlings or locusts.

Felicia Day

#21. For when they see the people swarm into the streets, and daily wet to the skin with rain, and yet cannot persuade them to go out of the rain, they do keep themselves within their houses, seeing they cannot remedy the folly of the people.

Thomas More

#22. The last thin paring of the old moon hung over the distant mountains to the west. Venus had moved away. With dark a gauzy swarm of stars. He could not guess what they were for so many.

Cormac McCarthy

#23. Under a low sun, pursued by fish and mounted by crows and veiled in a loud swarm of bluebottle flies, the body comes down the river like a deadfall stripped clean.

Jon Clinch

#24. I knew I didn't have much of a chance of getting away from that swarm of fae piranha, but it was an infinitely larger chance than I would have if I stayed in the car and burned to death. Hell's bells, what I wouldn't give to have my shield bracelet. Or my old staff. I didn't even have an umbrella.

Jim Butcher

#25. Perhaps we now need to engineer scarcity in our communications, in our interactions, and in the things we consume. Otherwise our lives become like a Morse code transmission that's lacking breaks - a swarm of noise blanketing the valuable data beneath.

Michael Harris

#26. A man might as well hope to fight a swarm of flies with a sword as to master his own thoughts when they are set on by the devil.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

#27. The peace of the Eastern church was invaded by a swarm of fanatics [monks], incapable of fear, or reason, or humanity; and the Imperial troops acknowledged, without shame, that they were much less apprehensive of an encounter with the fiercest Barbarians.

Edward Gibbon

#28. A multitude of bees can tell the time of day, calculate the geometry of the sun's position, argue about the best location for the next swarm. Bees do a lot of close observing of other bees; maybe they know what follows stinging and do it anyway.

Lewis Thomas

#29. Many a night I saw the Pleiads,
Rising thro' the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies,
Tangled in a silver braid.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

#30. The only time I mind autographs is when I'm out with my family. You're trying to enjoy kids and grandkids and here comes a swarm, and there go your wife and kids. That happens to every celebrity. It's the price you pay.

Billy Williams

#31. One of the words I railed against was "personality," as in a "TV personality." But now I wonder if it isn't the only word for that vast swarm of people who are famous for being famous - and possibly nothing else. What did the Gabor sisters actually do?

William Zinsser

#32. I will not doubt, though sorrows fall like rain, And troubles swarm like bees about a hive; I shall believe the heights for which I strive Are only reached by anguish and by pain; And though I groan and tremble with my crosses, I yet shall see, through my severest losses, The greater gain.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

#33. I ran. A grown man running with a swarm of screaming children. But i didn't care. I ran with the wind blowing in my face, and a smile as wide as the Valley of Panjsher on my lip.
I ran

Khaled Hosseini

#34. And I howled at that swarm and the crops and the sky, and the stars should have quit because there weren't no reason to be shining.

Chris Howard

#35. In the summer evenings, fireflies swarm around the tarn, making something hateful almost beautiful.

Bethany Griffin

#36. But the nightmares were accurate enough: we are like a swarm of mosquitoes, crazy with thirst and doomed to be swatted.

John Updike

#37. A giant motherboard of geese,
unruffled by the state
police, swarmed in unison,
in harmony...

Kristen Henderson

#38. It is easier and far more satisfying to retreat and compose yourself after every score - and execute perfectly choreographed plays - than to swarm about, arms flailing, and contest every inch of the basketball court. Underdog strategies

Malcolm Gladwell

#39. What a swarm of the pseudo-"delivered" stares down at us from the pinnacle of their salvation! Their conscience is clear - do they not claim to locate themselves above their actions? An intolerable swindle.

Emil Cioran

#40. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma ... and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes.

John Adams

#41. The multiplying villainies of nature do swarm upon him ... [from Macbeth]

Alan Moore

#42. We serve nature's purpose by culling the herd, and our own by sharpening our skills. We are the predatory swarm!

James Luceno

#43. For my own part, I am apt to join in the opinion with those who believe that all the regions of Nature swarm with spirits, and that we have multitudes of spectators on all our actions when we think ourselves most alone.

Joseph Addison

#44. There are billions of gods in the world. They swarm as thick as herring roe. Most of them are too small to see and never get worshipped, at least by anything bigger than bacteria, who never say their prayers and don't demand much in the way of miracles.

Terry Pratchett

#45. Perspective [is] a luxury when your head [is] constantly buzzing with a swarm of demons.

Khaled Hosseini

#46. My mother was always in the center of her own agitation, seeming as though, far away, part of her was being chased along a dirt road by a swarm of bees.

Laura Kasischke

#47. I hate the endless admonishments of a nanny state that lives in fear of its lawyers. While colonies of dim-witted traffic wardens swarm about looking for minor parking infringements, nobody seems to notice that our very social fabric is falling apart.

Christopher Fowler

#48. Words can be tiresome as a swarm of insects. They can prick and buzz! Words can be no more than a series of farts; or on the other hand they can be adamantine, obdurate, inviolable, stone upon stone.

Mervyn Peake

#49. After the storm the city lies becalmed. It is a sunny morning, still and cold. Branches litter the streets like broken limbs. People clear away the wreckage. They swarm around like ants whose anthill has been scuffed; how doggedly they rebuild their lives.

Deborah Moggach

#50. If the world goes crazy for a lovely fossil, that's fine with me. But if that fossil releases some kind of mysterious brain ray that makes people say crazy things and write lazy articles, a serious swarm of flies ends up in my ointment.

Carl Zimmer

#51. Hosts of merchants encumber the cities, and the streets are cluttered with solicitors who swarm without limit or purpose.

Charles Fourier

#52. A swarm of new business tools coming to phones and desktops near you promise to boost efficiency and streamline collaboration by borrowing social features from the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

Ryan Holmes

#53. Zombies have no memories of their former life. You wont see the undead trying to wash windows or do your taxes. All they know how to do is swarm and feed.

Max Brooks

#54. Disease Carrying thoughts swarm and multiply in the dark and twisted labyrinths of our minds, and all that is needed is a mob and a good political slogan for the epidemic to be spread once again, with a burst of automatic weapons or a mushroom cloud.

Romain Gary

#55. It created a murmur of voices, from which no single word could be discerned. Instead, it synthesized the sound of bees buzzing around in a mad swarm, angered by a breach of their hive.

Ashley DiMuzio

#56. The implied threat of using nuclear weapons to curb guerrillas was as absurd as to talk of using a sledge hammer to ward off a swarm of mosquitoes.

B.H. Liddell Hart

#57. Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey.

Orson Scott Card

#58. Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.

Henry David Thoreau

#59. We are the predatory swarm!

James Luceno

#60. I swear, Six is going to kill us, or worse, maybe she's about to be killed by a swarm of Mogs and we're here lying in the grass about to go through a scene from Romeo and Juliet.

Pittacus Lore

#61. I don't know much about kisses, but I can assure you that hers were no less fierce than a swarm of bullets tearing the air

Xavier Velasco

#62. Tsukuru couldn't fathom what this substance was. He couldn't accept or reject it. It merely settled on his body as a shadowy swarm, laying an ample amount of shadowy eggs. Then darkness would withdraw and twilight would return, bringing with it the birds, who once again slashed away at his body.

Haruki Murakami

#63. There have been many most excellent poets that have never versified, and now swarm many versifiers that need never answer to the name of poets.

Philip Sidney

#64. Come with me, Douglass; I will defend you with my life. I want you for a special purpose. When I strike, the bees will begin to swarm, and I shall want you to help hive them.

John Brown

#65. The Samuel Josephs were not a family. They were a swarm. The moment you entered the house they cropped up and jumped out at you from under the tables, through the stair rails, behind the doors, behind the coats in the passage. Impossible to count them: impossible to distinguish between them.

Katherine Mansfield

#66. Poor England! thou art a devoted deer,
Beset with every ill but that of fear.
The nations hunt; all mock thee for a prey;
They swarm around thee, and thou stand'st at bay.

William Cowper

#67. Humans don't leap buildings. Stuntmen with harnesses do. And won't my crashing eight stories to the ground be detrimental to the mission? The dark elves will swarm me and take me hostage instantly."
"That might be true, but you're not going to fall," he said.

Amanda Carlson

#68. Invisible insects of diabolical activity swarm in this place. I am tickled and twitched all over. Mentally, I have now committed a burglary under the meanest circumstances, and the myrmidons of justice are at my heels.

Charles Dickens

#69. The arguments in her brain were like a swarm of people running from a burning building and getting stuck in the door.

Rainbow Rowell

#70. There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life which is the more free the more abstract it's interests, and his elemental swarm-life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him

Leo Tolstoy

#71. Whatever question arose, a swarm of these drones, without having finished their buzzing on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum drowned and obscured the voices of those who were disputing honestly.

Leo Tolstoy

#72. The Ancient Egyptians considered it good luck to meet a swarm of Bees on the road. What they considered bad luck I couldn't say.

Will Cuppy

#73. We got it all wrong, there was no alien swarm descending from the sky in their flying saucers or big metal walkers like something out of Star Wars or cute little wrinkly E.T.s who just wanted to pluck a couple of leaves, eat some Reese's Pieces, and go home. That's not how it ends.

Rick Yancey

#74. Good Health At the busstop a swarm of youngsters crowded on board. Loaded down with books and notebooks and other stuff, they filled the bus with nonstop chatter and laughter. Talking all at once, shouting, pushing, showing off, they laughed at anything and everything.

Eduardo Galeano

#75. Cold has a thousand ways of moving in the world: on the sea it gallops like a troop of horses, on the countryside it falls like a swarm of locusts, in the cities like a knife-blade it slashes the streets and penetrates the chinks of unheated houses.

Italo Calvino

#76. Strangely enough, he felt his fear whisked away like a swarm of gnats caught in the wind, replaced by an intense curiosity.

James Dashner

#77. Millions of human vermin swarm sweating along the night-arched cavernous roads. (Happily rapid chemical processes will disintegrate them all.

Richard Aldington

#78. The Element is about discovering your self, and you can't do this if you're trapped in a compulsion to conform. You can't be yourself in a swarm.

Ken Robinson

#79. Within a diverse swarm of individuals and small groups, resistance can be anywhere and anything; everywhere and all the time.

Curious George Brigade

#80. It is astonishing how much worse one mosquito can be than a swarm. A swarm can be prepared against, but one mosquito takes on a personality - a hatefulness, a sinister quality of the struggle to the death.

F Scott Fitzgerald

#81. The great effort of civilization has been, and still is, the attempt to introduce a principle of control into that casual swarm of impressions which makes up men's thought and of which, especially with swayed by emotion, spontaneous action is the law.

George Edward Woodberry

#82. The fiercest serpent may be overcome by a swarm of ants,

Isoroku Yamamoto

#83. When the Attorney-General ceased, a buzz arose in the court as if a cloud of great blue-flies were swarming about the prisoner, in anticipation of what he was soon to become.

Charles Dickens

#84. And of a Sunday swarm the folk
Under the honeysuckle vine,
Quaffing, the while they talk and smoke,
The sun, the melody, the wine.

Theophile Gautier

#85. At a guess I'll guarantee to lead you to thirty or forty alleys and networks of alleys north of Prince Street that aren't suspected by ten living beings outside of the foreigners that swarm them.

H.P. Lovecraft