Bee Keeper Quotes

Gulls wheel through spokes of sunlight over gracious roofs and dowdy thatch, snatching entrails at the marketplace and escaping over cloistered gardens, spike topped walls and treble-bolted doors. Gulls alight on whitewashed gables, creaking pagodas and dung-ripe stables; circle over towers and cavernous bells and over hidden squares where urns of urine sit by covered wells, watched by mule-drivers, mules and wolf-snouted dogs, ignored by hunch-backed makers of clogs; gather speed up the stoned-in Nakashima River and fly beneath the arches of its bridges, glimpsed form kitchen doors, watched by farmers walking high, stony ridges. Gulls fly through clouds of steam from laundries' vats; over kites unthreading corpses of cats; over scholars glimpsing truth in fragile patterns; over bath-house adulterers, heartbroken slatterns; fishwives dismembering lobsters and crabs; their husbands gutting mackerel on slabs; woodcutters' sons sharpening axes; candle-makers, rolling waxes; flint-eyed officials milking taxes; etiolated lacquerers; mottle-skinned dyers; imprecise soothsayers; unblinking liars; weavers of mats; cutters of rushes; ink-lipped calligraphers dipping brushes; booksellers ruined by unsold books; ladies-in-waiting; tasters; dressers; filching page-boys; runny-nosed cooks; sunless attic nooks where seamstresses prick calloused fingers; limping malingerers; swineherds; swindlers; lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and ageing rakes by other men's wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores; statues of Jizo anointed with posies; syphilitics sneezing through rotted-off noses; potters; barbers; hawkers of oil; tanners; cutlers; carters of night-soil; gate-keepers; bee-keepers; blacksmiths and drapers; torturers; wet-nurses; perjurers; cut-purses; the newborn; the growing; the strong-willed and pliant; the ailing; the dying; the weak and defiant; over the roof of a painter withdrawn first from the world, then his family, and down into a masterpiece that has, in the end, withdrawn from its creator; and around again, where their flight began, over the balcony of the Room of Last Chrysanthemum, where a puddle from last night's rain is evaporating; a puddle in which Magistrate Shiroyama observes the blurred reflections of gulls wheeling through spokes of sunlight. This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.

Keepers must have spirit and keep it aloft. They are made keepers because they understand why we are here. Why it matters. Because they understand the stories. They feel the buzzing of the bees in their veins.

Don't!" cried Jamie. "Don't be bitter, Margaret. We don't know why, we never can know why things happen in this world exactly as they do; but this we know: We know that God is in His Heaven, that He is merciful to the extent of ordaining mercy; we know that if we disobey and take our own way and run contrary to His commandments, we are bitterly punished. And it is the most pitiful of laws that no man or woman can take their punishment alone in this world. It is the law that none of us can suffer without making someone else suffer, but in some way it must be that everything works out for the best, even if we can't possibly see how that could be when things are happening that hurt us so.

I think people who read novels are fantasists in desperate need of emotional dope to anesthetize them against the reality of their meaningless existence.

Reason may be depended upon to keep its balance when God gives the surcease of tears in time of trouble.

I may have a condition that causes me to see things that no one else can, but I am loved. Loved. Wanted. Needed. Something shifts in my heart and mind like a bone snapping back into its socket. And then, this singular thought: it isn't selfish to want more than this.

As long as there have been bees, there have been keepers.

He swore by all that he ever had loved and reverenced that he would try, try with all his might in the short time that might remain to him...he would forget himself, he would put his own pain and chagrin and disappointment, his own feeling of defeat and uselessness, his own craving for love and intellectual companionship in the background, and he would see if the more than six feet of bone and muscle that contained his being could do any small service that might come his way for God and his fellow man before he went. Maybe if he could accomplish some little thing, something that would ease the ache of even one heart that ached as his was aching at that minute, just maybe that knowledge would be the secret that he might carry in his breast that would set the stamp of an indelible smile on his face, so that even a child could discern the majesty of the impulse and he would not be ashamed when the end came.

Jamie reflected that if he purposely went down to the crags of the Pacific and threw himself to the sharks, when he came before God and his father and mother, he could carry no smiling secret on his face. He would not have kept the faith. He would have broken the laws of God and man. He would have allowed frail woman to surpass him in courage, in endurance. He shut his eyes to close out even the imagined look on his mother's face. So right there Jamie crossed off the Pacific from his scheme of release.

But he was thankful for the offer and dimly he was beginning to formulate in his mind the feeling that the world is made up of good people and bad people, of selfish people and thoughtful people, of cruel people and kind people, and it was merely a case of luck as to which kind you met when you went on a great adventure.

Most people dealing with PTSD find some way of numbing themselves: drugs, alcohol, sexual excess—” “Let’s hear more about that one,” Somers murmured into Hazard’s shoulder. Hazard pinched the inside of Somers’s thigh, and Somers yelped. “—while other people depersonalize and dissociate. They often describe it as feeling dead inside, unable to connect with other people, unable to experience pleasure or love or affection, even with the ones who are closest to them.

That month he developed the habit every night of picking up the Bible the last thing before he went to bed and reading a few verses, and from thinking a prayer and from thinking thanksgiving, he advanced to the place where he boldly, in the silence and serenity of the little room, got down on his knees and prayed the prayer of thanksgiving. Then he followed it by the prayer of asking. He found himself asking God to take care of all the world, to help everyone who needed help; to put the spirit and courage into every heart to fare forth and to attempt the Great Adventure on its own behalf... Then he arose, in some way fortified, a trifle bigger, slightly prouder, more capable, more of a man that he had been the day before. He had asked for help and he knew that he was receiving help, and he knew that never again would he be ashamed to face any man, or any body of men, and tell them that he had asked for help and that help had been forthcoming, and that the same experience lay in the reach of every man if he would only take the Lord at His word; if he would only do what all men are so earnestly urged to do--believe.

He did not want to fail, when the Bee Master had trusted him with the home and the possessions and the occupation that were all he had of his very own, and he did not know that as the storm drew nearer, as the clouds grew blacker, as the heat waves resolved themselves into definite flashes of lightning, as the night closed down black as velvet around him, he did not realize that his moral and mental forces were rising with the tide of the storm, that all the remnants of manhood left in his shaken body were gathering together for some sort of culmination, just as presently the storm would reach its height and then subside.

LIGHT PALE AS MILK guided the old man’s steps over the field to the creek and then to the mountain, stepping into the black wall of pineshadows and climbing up the lower slopes out into the hardwoods, bearded hickories trailing grapevines, oaks and crooked waterless cottonwoods, a quarter mile from the creek now, past the white chopped butt of a bee tree lately felled, past the little hooked Indian tree and passing silent and catlike up the mountain in the darkness under latticed leaves scudding against the sky in some small wind. Light saw him through the thick summer ivy and over windfalls and limestone. Past the sink where on a high bluff among trilobites and fishbones, shells of ossified crustaceans from an ancient sea, a great stone tusk jutted.

...Wrapped in the overcoat, he dropped on the seat and faced the eternal verities of sky and sea. No land was intruding. It was the bowl of the sky closing down; the smooth wash of the sea rolling in; and away in the distance a faint red glow marked the spot where the sun threw its light on a world that was steadily turning from it. There Jamie did some more thinking. He was having plenty of mental exercise in those days. He still thought Death, but at least he had a manlier thought in facing it. And when he thought Life he did not think of himself, or upbraid his government, or pity other wounded men. He thought merely of that one thing he might possibly do and what it might possibly be that would give him some justification, when he faced his Maker, for the spending of his latter days.

People have wracked their brains for an explanation of benzene and how the celebrated man, August Kekulé, managed to come up with the concept of the benzene theory. With regard to the last point especially, a friend of mine who is a farmer and has a lively interest in chemistry has asked me a question which I would like to share with you. My 'agricultural friend' apparently believes he has traced the origins of the benzene theory. 'Has Kekulé,' so ran the question, 'once been a bee-keeper? You certainly know that bees too build hexagons; they know well that they can store the greatest amount of honey that way with the least amount of wax. I always liked it,' my agricultural friend went on, 'When I received a new issue of the Berichte; admittedly, I don't read the articles, but I like the pictures very much. The patterns of benzene, naphthalene and especially anthracene are indeed wonderful. When I look at the pictures I always have to think of the honeycombs of my bee hives.

my love thy hair is one kingdom the king whereof is darkness thy forehead is a flight of flowers thy head is a quick forest filled with sleeping birds thy breasts are swarms of white bees upon the bough of thy body thy body to me is April in whose armpits is the approach of spring thy thighs are white horses yoked to a chariot of kings they are the striking of a good minstrel between them is always a pleasant song. my love thy head is a casket of the cool jewel of thy mind the hair of thy head is one warrior innocent of defeat thy hair upon thy shoulders is an army with victory and with trumpets thy legs are the trees of dreaming whose fruit is the very eatage of forgetfulness thy lips are satraps in scariet in whose kiss is the combining of kings thy wrists are holy which are the keepers of the keys of thy blood thy feet upon thy ankles are flowers in vases of silver in thy beauty is the dilemma of flutes thy eyes are the betrayal of bells comprehended through incense

Suggested Reading Atkinson, Kate. Behind the Scenes at the Museum; Binchy, Maeve. Tara Road, The Copper Beech, and Evening Class; Bloom, Amy. Come to Me; Edwards, Kim. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter; Ferris, Joshua. The Unnamed; Flynn, Gillian. Gone Girl; Foer, Jonathan Safran. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; Franzen, Jonathan. The Corrections; Ganesan, Indira. Inheritance; Hanilton, Jane. Disobedience; Jonasson, Jonas. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared; Joyce, Rachel. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry; Kidd, Sue Monk. The Secret Life of Bees; Mapson, Jo-Ann, The Owl & Moon Cafe; McEwan, Ian. Atonement; Miller, Arthur. All My Sons; Morrison, Toni. Love; O’Neill, Eugene. Long Day’s Journey into Night; Pekkanen, Sarah. The Opposite of Me; Porter, Andrew. In Between Days; Quindlen, Anna. Blessings and One True Thing; Rosenfeld, Lucinda. The Pretty One; Sittenfeld, Curtis. Sisterland; Smith, Ali. There But For The; Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club; Tyler, Anne. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant; White, Karen. The Time Between; Williams, Tennessee. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway; Yates, Richard. The Easter Parade.

Gulls wheel through spokes of sunlight over gracious roofs and dowdy thatch, snatching entrails at the marketplace and escaping over cloistered gardens, spike-topped walls and treble-bolted doors. Gulls alight on whitewashed gables, creaking pagodas and dung-ripe stables; circle over towers and cavernous bells and over hidden squares where urns of urine sit by covered wells, watched by mule-drivers, mules and wolf-snouted dogs, ignored by hunchbacked makers of clogs; gather speed up the stoned-in Nakashima River and fly beneath the arches of its bridges, glimpsed from kitchen doors, watched by farmers walking high, stony ridges. Gulls fly through clouds of steam from laundries’ vats; over kites unthreading corpses of cats; over scholars glimpsing truth in fragile patterns; over bath-house adulterers; heartbroken slatterns; fishwives dismembering lobsters and crabs; their husbands gutting mackerel on slabs; woodcutters’ sons sharpening axes; candle-makers, rolling waxes; flint-eyed officials milking taxes; etoliated lacquerers; mottled-skinned dyers; imprecise soothsayers; unblinking liars; weavers of mats; cutters of rushes; ink-lipped calligraphers dipping brushes; booksellers ruined by unsold books; ladies-in-waiting; tasters; dressers; filching page-boys; runny-nosed cooks; sunless attic nooks where seamstresses prick calloused fingers; limping malingerers; swineherds; swindlers; lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and ageing rakes by other men’s wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores; statues of Jizo anointed with posies; syphilitics sneezing through rotted-off noses; potters; barbers; hawkers of oil; tanners; cutlers; carters of night-soil; gate-keepers; bee-keepers; blacksmiths and drapers; torturers; wet-nurses; perjurers; cut-purses; the newborn; the growing; the strong-willed and pliant; the ailing; the dying; the weak and defiant; over the roof of a painter withdrawn first from the world, then his family, and down into a masterpiece that has, in the end, withdrawn from its creator; and around again, where their flight began, over the balcony of the Room of the Last Chrysanthemum, where a puddle from last night’s rain is evaporating; a puddle in which Magistrate Shiroyama observes the blurred reflections of gulls wheeling through spokes of sunlight. This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.

Tis a long journey, Sir, replied the master of the inn——unless a man has great business.——Tut! tut! said the stranger, I have been at the promontory of Noses; and have got me one of the goodliest, thank Heaven, that ever fell to a single man’s lot. Whilst the stranger was giving this odd account of himself, the master of the inn and his wife kept both their eyes fixed full upon the stranger’s nose——By saint Radagunda, said the inn-keeper’s wife to herself, there is more of it than in any dozen of the largest noses put together in all Strasburg! is it not, said she, whispering her husband in his ear, is it not a noble nose? ’Tis an imposture, my dear,' said the master of the inn——’tis a false nose.' ’Tis a true nose,' said his wife. ’Tis made of fir-tree,' said he, I smell the turpentine.—— 'There’s a pimple on it,' said she. ’Tis a dead nose,' replied the inn-keeper. ’Tis a live nose, if I am alive myself,' said the inn-keeper’s wife. The stranger had not got half a league on his way towards Frankfort before were just ringing to call the Strasburgers to their devotions, and shut up the duties of the day in prayer:—no soul in all Strasburg heard ’em—the city was like a swarm of bees——men, women, and children, (the Compline bells tinkling all the time) flying here and there—in at one door, out at another——this way and that way—long ways and cross ways—up one street, down another street——in at this alley, out of that——did you see it? did you see it? did you see it? O! did you see it?——who saw it? who did see it? for mercy’s sake, who saw it? Alack o’day! I was at vespers!—I was washing, I was starching, I was scouring, I was quilting——God help me! I never saw it——I never touch’d it!——would I had been a centinel, a bandy-legg’d drummer, a trumpeter, a trumpeter’s wife, was the general cry and lamentation in every street and corner of Strasburg.

everything works out for the best,

The point Molly brought out was that the great American breakfast, eggs and toast and bacon and coffee, is about a deadly combination. Molly said that doctor proved that the yeast of bread and the albumen of egg and the fat of bacon and what caffeine you get in coffee would kill a guinea pig in short order.

It seems that you may eat all the eggs you want cooked any conceivable way, but you must not take them in combination with the yeast of bread and the acids of meat. You may eat all the starch you please at one meal; but you must not take it in combination with the acids of meat or albumen. You must keep the bread and potatoes and starchy things confined to one meal. Then for dinner you may have any kind of meat you want, but you must take it with vegetables that are not starchy. You must cut off the bread, beans, potatoes, any starch. You must confine the desserts to fruits and jellos and leave out the pastry. It is simple; it is easy. Merely a slightly different arrangement in combinations of the same things you have been eating all your life.

The point Molly brought out was that the great American breakfast, eggs and toast and bacon and coffee, is about a deadly combination. Molly said that doctor proved that the yeast of bread and the albumen of egg and the fat of bacon and what caffeine you get in coffee would kill a guinea pig in short order. It seems that you may eat all the eggs you want cooked any conceivable way, but you must not take them in combination with the yeast of bread and the acids of meat. You may eat all the starch you please at one meal; but you must not take it in combination with the acids of meat or albumen. You must keep the bread and potatoes and starchy things confined to one meal.

- [ ] Without bugs, there are no fruits or vegetables, so I will court the crap out of the bees and the butterflies. I will seduce them with flowery-sweet nectar and scintillating aromas until they bow to my whims and pollinate my vegetables like horny rabbits.

Holly Berries A Confederate Christmas Story by Refugitta There was, first, behind the clear crystal pane, a mammoth turkey, so fat that it must have submitted to be killed from sheer inability to eat and move, hung all around with sausage balls and embowered in crisp white celery with its feathered tops. Many a belated housekeeper or father of a family, passing by, cast loving glances at the monster bird, and turned away with their hands on depleted purses and arms full of brown paper parcels. Then there were straw baskets of eggs, white and shining with the delightful prospect of translation into future eggnogs; pale yellow butter stamped with ears of corn, bee hives, and statuesque cows with their tails in an attitude. But these were all substantials, and the principal attraction was the opposition window, where great pyramids of golden oranges, scaly brown pineapples, festoons of bananas, boxes of figs and raisins with their covers thrown temptingly aside, foreign sauces and pickles, cheeses, and gilded walnuts were arranged in picturesque regularity, jut, as it seemed, almost within reach of one’s olfactories and mouth, until a closer proximity realized the fact of that thick plate glass between. Inside it was just the same: there were barrels and boxes in a perfect wilderness; curious old foreign packages and chests, savory of rare teas and rarer jellies; cinnamon odors like gales from Araby meeting you at every turn; but yet everything, from the shining mahogany counter under the brilliant gaslight, up to the broad, clean, round face of the jolly grocer Pin, was so neat and orderly and inviting that you felt inclined to believe yourself requested to come in and take off things by the pocketful, without paying a solitary cent. I acknowledge that it was an unreasonable distribution of favors for Mr. Pin to own, all to himself, this abundance of good things. Now, in my opinion, little children ought to be the shop keepers when there are apples and oranges to be sold, and I know they will all agree with me, for I well remember my earliest ambition was that my papa would turn confectioner, and then I could eat my way right through the store. But our friend John Pin was an appreciative person, and not by any means forgetful of his benefits. All day long and throughout the short afternoon, his domain had been thronged with busy buyers, old and young, and himself and his assistant (a meager-looking young man of about the dimensions of a knitting needle) constantly employed in supplying their demands. From the Southern Illustrated News.

Katy, that the whole world can be involved in this madness we call war, and all the while the flowers and the bees and the seasons keep on doing what they must, wise but never weary in their wait for humanity to come to its senses and remember the beauty of life? It is queer, but my love and longing for the world are always deepened by my absence from it; it’s wondrous, don’t you think, that a person can swing from despair to gleeful hunger, and that even during these dark days there is happiness to be found in the smallest things?) Anyway,

Bees remember injuries done to any of their number, for some time, and generally find an opportunity to avenge them. 4.

I never yet met with a keeper of bees, who was not a respectable, well-conducted member of society, and a moral, if not a religious man.

Men often came to visit in the evening when the fire was burning in the hearth. Occasionally came Peter Laurenz the blacksmith, Paul Joachim the mason, Adam the linen weaver, Zacharias the tavern keeper, Mathias, Norbert, Jakob, and others. When there was a spinning bee at Witiko's house, maidens and weavers came with their spinning wheels to take part; some young men and youths also showed up such as Phillip the stirrup maker, Maz Albrecht, rosy cheeked Urban, Laurenz the blacksmith's cousin, Veit Gregor, Lambert the drummer, Wolfgang, Andreas, Augustin the piper and several others. At times the maidens sang, then the youths, then together or alternating stanzas. They always went home at the ninth hour.

A keeper is there to provide help, not to impose a human’s notion of order. Because as much as it looks like a monarchy, a hive does not depend on any individual bee, not even the queen—on her own, without her attendants or her drones or her daughters, she is nothing.

That’s the problem with secrets. They buzz around inside the keeper like a hive of bees. Before long, somebody pokes it and the secrets swarm out, vexed and ready to sting.

As a side note- don't you find it remarkable, Katy, that the whole world can be involved in this madness we call war, and all the while the flowers and the bees and the seasons keep on doing what they must, wise but never weary in their wait for humanity to come to its senses and remember the beauty of life? It is queer, but my love and longing for the world are always deepened by my absence from it; it's wondrous, don't you think, that a person can swing from despair to gleeful hunger, and that even during these dark days there is happiness to be found in the smallest things?

-Eve, you mean more to me than any job...than any other woman...than anything in this whole world, in fact. I wasn't unhappy before I met you but I was incomplete. Meeting you wasn't just an accident. We were meant to be. We go together like...like haggis and tatties...like bees and flowers...like fish and chips... Eve if I'm honest, I think I've loved you since the moment I first met you that day Lily brought you in the refectory and if it's possible, I love you more each passing day. You're the sun in my sky...my light in the darkness. Okay, the clichés are coming out now but...Well I don't care. You're the most stunning woman in any room you walk into. You make me laugh. You even laugh at my jokes and that's a sure fire way to show you're a keeper. You rein me in when I'm impulsive...but I really hope you don't rein me in this time. You've filled my heart with love I could never have imagined feeling. And if you'll have me, I'll try my very best to make you as happy as you make me feel with just one of your beautiful smiles. Eve...will you marry me?

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