A Quote by George Santayana

The fly that prefers sweetness to a long life may drown in honey.

George Santayana

Quote Topics

Drown Fly Honey Life Long Long Life May Sweetness

Quote Author

George Santayana
Spanish - Novelist
December 16, 1863 - September 26, 1952

The fly that touches honey cannot use it's wings; so too the soul that clings to spiritual sweetness ruins it's freedom and hinders contemplation.

Sri Aurobindo

One may be clogged with honey and unable to rise and fly.

Elizabeth Gaskell

The sweetness of life lies in usefulness, like honey deep in the heart of a clover bloom.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

To pile up honey upon sugar, and sugar upon honey, to an interminable tedious sweetness.

Charles Lamb

He is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature.

W. Somerset Maugham

An errant May-fly swerved unsteadily athwart the current in the intoxicated fashion affected by young bloods of May-flies seeing life. A swirl of water and a 'cloop!' and the May-fly was visible no more

Kenneth Grahame

The adult May fly lives only a few hours, just long enough to mate. He has neither mouth nor stomach, but needs neither since he does not live long enough to need to eat. The eggs the May fly leaves hatch after the parent has died. What is it all about. What's the point? There is no point. That's just the way it is. It is neither good nor bad. Life is mainly simply inevitable. (41)

Sheldon B. Kopp

As it is impossible to verbally describe the sweetness of honey to one who has never tasted honey, so the goodness of God cannot be clearly communicated by way of teaching if we ourselves are not able to penetrate into the goodness of the Lord by our own experience.

Saint Basil

Not only after two or three centuries, but in a million years, life will still be as it was; life does not change, it remains for ever, following its own laws which do not concern us, or which, at any rate, you will never find out. Migrant birds, cranes for example, fly and fly, and whatever thoughts, high or low, enter their heads, they will still fly and not know why or where. They fly and will continue to fly, whatever philosophers come to life among them; they may philosophize as much as they like, only they will fly.

Anton Chekhov

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

The honey in the flower or lotus does not crave for bees; they do not plead with the bees to come. Since they have tasted the sweetness, they themselves search for the flowers and rush in. They come because of the attachment between themselves and sweetness. So, too, is the relationship between the woman who knows the limits and the respect she evokes.

Sathya Sai Baba

The flowers are full of honey, but only the bee finds out the sweetness.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I've been eating honey since I was young. I've been putting it on everything. I put it on fried chicken, put it on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I put it on my cereal. What else do I put honey on? I put honey on my face. Man, honey is the essential item to life.

DeAndre Hopkins

When you came, you were like red wine and honey, and the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.

Amy Lowell

with poems one accomplishes so little when one writes them early. One should hold off and gather sense and sweetness a whole life long, a long life if possible, and then, right at the end, one could perhaps write ten lines that are good.