A Quote by Richard Preston

The dragonfly is an exceptionally beautiful insect and a fierce carnivore. It has four wings that beat independently. This gives it an ability to maneuver in the air with superb dexterity. A dragonfly can put on a burst of speed, stop on a dime, hover, fly backward, and switch direction in a flash. This is a hunting behavior known as hawking.

Richard Preston

Quote Topics

Ability Air Backward Beat Beautiful Behavior Burst Dexterity Dime Direction Dragonfly Fierce Flash Fly Four Gives Hover Hunting Independently Insect Known Maneuver Put Speed Stop Superb Switch Wings

Quote Author

Richard Preston
American - Writer

When a dragonfly flutters by, you may not realize, but it's the greatest flier in nature. It can hover, fly backwards, even upside down.

Louie Schwartzberg

When I was two, a dragonfly flew near me. A man knocked it to the ground and trod on it. I remember crying because I'd caused the dragonfly to be killed.

Jane Goodall

So, that was Nature's way. The mosquito felt pain and panic but the dragonfly knew nothing of cruelty. Humans would call it evil, the big dragonfly destroying the mosquito and ignoring the little insects suffering. Yet humans hated mosquitoes too, calling them vicious and bloodthirsty. All these words, words like 'evil' and 'vicious', they meant nothing to Nature. Yes, evil was a human invention.

John Marsden

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air The air which is now thoroughly small and dry Smaller and dryer than the will Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still

T. S. Eliot

The point of the dragonfly's terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows,is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn'tbut that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, finged tangle. Freedom is the world's water and weather, the world's nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz.

Annie Dillard

Reflected in the dragonfly's eye -- mountains.

Kobayashi Issa

As birds' wings beat the solid air without which none could fly so words freed by the imagination affirm reality by their flight.

William Carlos Williams

There is no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in intelligence—or even in life. Both may be random accidental by-products of its operations like the beautiful patterns on a butterfly's wings. The insect would fly just as well without them.

Arthur C. Clarke

If you are old and you wish to be young again, if only for a moment, try and identify a dragonfly.

Simon Barnes

Smile / to see the lake / lay / the still sky / And / out for an easy / make / the dragonfly.

Lorine Niedecker

It's very far away/It takes about a half a day to get there/ If we travel by-dragonfly.

Jimi Hendrix

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragonfly Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Most birds were created to fly. Being grounded for them is a limitation within their ability to fly, not the other way around. You, on the other hand, were created to be loved. So for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around. Living unloved is like clipping a bird’s wings and removing its ability to fly. Not something I want for you. Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly. And if left unresolved for very long, you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place.

William P. Young

Go to sleep, baby,Mama will sing. Of blue butterflies, and dragonfly wings. Moonlight and sunbeams, raiments so fine. Silver and gold, for baby of mine. Go to sleep, baby. Sister will tell, of wolves and of lambs, and demons who fell.-Pierce's Lullaby Kim Harrison (Black Magic Sanction)

Kim Harrison

A big business man was telling Henry Ford about a coach driver of super-expertness with his whip. The driver was telling how he could flick a fly off his horse's ear with his whip-and, a fly alighting just then, he promptly did so. Next he spied a grasshopper beside the road, and he flicked it off with equal dexterity. A little further along the road the passenger noticed an insect on a bush, and nudged the driver to get him. Not on your life, replied the master of the whip. That there insect is a hornet sitting on his nest with an organization behind him. I leave him alone.