Worm Inspiration Quotes

We are all worms, But I do believe that I am a glow worm.

Yet, at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways—the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with. The lower animals are, of course, spared this painful contradiction, as they lack a symbolic identity and the self-consciousness that goes with it. They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If they pause at all, it is only a physical pause; inside they are anonymous, and even their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were, in a state of dumb being. This is what has made it so simple to shoot down whole herds of buffalo or elephants. The animals don't know that death is happening and continue grazing placidly while others drop alongside them. The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams and even the most sun-filled days—that's something else.

A man who tosses worms in the river isn’t 't necessarily a friend of the fish. All the fish who take him for a friend, who think the worm’s got no hook in it, usually end up in the frying pan.

‎They are angry with me, because I know what I am." Said the little eagle. "How do you know that they are angry with you?" "Because, they despise me for wanting to soar, they only want me to peck at the dirt, looking for ants, with them. But I can't do that. I don't have chicken feet, I have eagle wings." "And what is so wrong with having eagle wings and no chicken feet?" Asked the old owl. "I'm not sure, that's what I'm trying to find out." "They hate you because you know that you are an eagle and they want you to think you are a chicken so that you will peck at the ground looking for ants and worms, so that you will never know that you are an eagle and always think yourself a chicken. Let them hate you, they will always be chickens, and you will always be an eagle. You must fly. You must soar." Said the old owl.

I am a book lover. I buy, collect and read books.

What is there in thee, Man, that can be known? Dark fluxion, all unfixable by thought, A phantom dim of past and future wrought, Vain sister of the worm ...

These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle, and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased, and I turned away with disgust and loathing.

Your mind is a hive of worms. And worms don't live in a hive, so it already feels unnatural.

If God is the Creator, if God englobes every single thing in the universe, then God is everything, and everything is God. God is the earth and the sky, and the tree planted in the earth under the sky, and the bird in the tree, and the worm in the beak of the bird, and the dirt in the stomach of the worm. God is He and She, straight and gay, black and white and red - yes even that...and green and blue and all the rest. And so, to despise me for loving women or you for being a Red who made love with a woman, would be to despise not only His own creations but also to hate Himself. My God is not so stupid as that.

The early bird gets the worm, and the early fox gets the bird.

The worm doth woo the mortal, death claims a living bride, Night unto day is married, morn unto eventide, Earth a merry damsel, and heaven a knight so true, And Earth is quite coquettish, and beseemeth in vain to sue.

You can make it all right if you will only be satisfied to remain small,' I told myself. I had to keep saying it over and over to myself. 'Be little. Don't try to be big. Work under the guns. Be a little worm in the fair apple of life.' I got all of these sayings at my tongue's end, used to go through the streets of Chicago muttering them to myself.

The worm’s bad luck is the bird’s good fortune.

Why should what's between my legs be considered any smarter or stupider, any worse or better? It's all just meat, Don Tric. In the end, it's all just food for worms.

A life with purpose can only end in honor.

A bird does not give up flying today because it couldn't find any worms yesterday.

…imagine that the earth—four thousand six hundred million years old—[were] a forty-six-year-old woman…. It had taken the whole of the Earth Woman’s life for the earth to become what it was. For the oceans to part. For the mountains to rise. The Earth Woman was eleven years old…when the first single-celled organisms appeared. The first animals, creatures like worms and jellyfish, appeared only when she was forty. She was over forty-five—just eight months ago—when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The whole of human civilization as we know it began only two hours ago in the Earth Woman’s life…. It was an awe-inspiring and humbling thought…that the whole of contemporary history, the World Wars, the War of Dreams, the Man on the Moon, science, literature, philosophy, the pursuit of knowledge—was no more than a blink of the Earth Woman’s eye.

I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you, And you must not be abased to the other. Loaf with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat, Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best, Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice. I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, How you settled your head athwart my hips, and gently turned over upon me, And parted the shirt from my bosom bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stripped heart, And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet. Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth, And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, And that a kelson of the creation is love, And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields, And brown ants in the little wells beneath them, And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heaped stones, elder, mullein and pokeweed.

Not that food which entereth into the moth defileth a man, but the appetite with which it is eaten. It is neither the quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors; when that which is eaten is not a viand to sustain our animal, or inspire our spiritual life, but food for the worms that possess us.

I am a compost heap, and everything I interact with, every experience I've had, gets shoveled onto the heap where it eventually mulches down, is digested and excreted by worms, and rots. It's from that rich, dark humus, the combination of what you encountered, what you know and what you've forgotten, that ideas start to grow.

Life's rainy days... They bring out the rainbows, but they also bring out the worms. Pay attention to who's who and what's what.

A caterpillar knows it's a butterfly, even if the whole world tries to convince it that it's just a worm.

It’s not the early bird that gets the worm, it's the one who knows to go outside after a rainstorm.

The early bird gets the first worm, but the wisest bird gets the fastest one.

An ambitious worm is better than a complacent butterfly.

Who shoots at the midday sun, though he be sure he shall never hit the mark, yet as sure he is he shall shoot higher than who aims but at a bush.

(As to how the Gatekeeper came to life) Once a bookworm, always a bookworm. But inspiration starts once that lowly worm crawls up your brain; it would be too difficult to contain and all hell breaks loose, and that otherwise blank piece of paper becomes its battleground, teeming with chicken-scratch scribbles of what was going on in that nook that used to be your secret sanctuary. You have no choice but just to concede, and surrender to its call to breathe life into a name.

One fine morning, I awoke to discover that, during the night, I had learned to understand the language of birds. I have listened to them ever since. They say: 'Look at me!' or: 'Get out of here!' or: 'Let's fuck!' or: 'Help!' or: 'Hurrah!' or: 'I found a worm!' and that's all they say. And that, when you boil it down, is about all we say. (Which of those things am I saying now?)

Life is like taking a swim in the ocean, you never really know what to expect when you dive in. the worst part is, it doesn't matter how you get into the water. Weather you dive in head first, or take every step with caution. when the tidal wave hits you like a ton of bricks, it's up to you to decide if your going to let that wave suck you in, or if your going to fight till you feel the reassuring worm sand beneath your feet. like that wave, life will not give up the fight, so why should we just let it win.

Organs evolve to perform a particular function, but once they exist, they can be adapted for other usages as well. Mouths, for example, appeared because the earliest multicellular organisms needed a way to take nutrients into their bodies. We still use our mouths for that purpose, but we also use them to kiss, speak and, if we are Rambo, to pull the pins out of hand grenades. Are any of these uses unnatural simply because our worm-like ancestors 600 million years ago didn't do those things with their mouths?

And if, to-morrow, leaving their feelings toward us untouched, nature were to give them the intelligence and the weapons wherewith to conquer us, I confess that I should distrust the hasty vengeance of the horse, the obstinate reprisals of the ass and the maddened meekness of the sheep. I should shun the cat as I should shun the tiger; and even the good cow, solemn and somnolent, would inspire me with but a wary confidence. As for the hen, with her round, quick eye, as when discovering a slug or a worm, I am sure that she would devour me without a thought.

These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased and I turned away with disgust and loathing.

The supposedly eyewitness authority of the Pseudo-Turpin finds a parallel in another genre in which vernacular prose was pioneered: that of the historical memoir. There were twelfth-century verse histories narrated by authors who had personally participated in the events they describe, such as the Third Crusade. But the Fourth Crusade of 1202-4 saw a switch to prose. This shameful fiasco, in which the crusaders were induced to turn aside from the Holy Land and attack instead the Christian city of Constantinople, inspired two contrasting accounts. Robert de Clari--ignorant of higher-level strategy, but all agog at the splendours of Constantinople--gives a worm's eye view. Geoffroi de Villehardouin, by contrast, has a top diplomat's suave authority and a leader's eye for the aesthetics of war--the splendid sight of a fleet, or the noble heroism of a ruler. For both authors the medium of prose seems to convey the purported authenticity and transparency of lived experience.

The war should stop,” Andrew declared to him, thinking he had finally found a willing ear to sympathize with his dilemma. ‘There’s so much suffering going on. It is madness. I ask you, as a holy man, if there is a Supreme Being, why doesn’t he step in and end it?” “Do the fish see the water?” “The fish…see water?” “Do the worms in the dung heap see the dung they borrow through? Does humanity see the world? You, my son, are but a thin thread, interwoven with many threads of all colors, but you cannot see the tapestry of which you are a part. You are only one note in a song that you cannot hear. Suffering, is the world, and the world is the same as suffering.

Demons worm these teachings into false religions, cults, pulpits, denominations, and seminary classrooms. Satan is mentioned in four of the seven letters to the churches in Revelation 2–3. We must never forget that “Satan is always at church before the preacher is in the pulpit or a member is in the pew. He comes to hinder the sower, to impoverish the soil, or to corrupt the seed.”3 What are some of these demonic doctrines that are being peddled today? God is a myth. Creation happened by time and chance. Man is simply a higher form of animal. Man is inherently good. The Bible was written by men; it’s not inspired by God. The Bible is filled with contradictions and errors. The Bible is one of many books that contain divine revelation. Man can get to heaven by his own good works. Jesus is not God, but a created being. Jesus did not physically rise from the dead. The miracles in the Bible never really happened. Everyone will go to heaven. There is no hell. God’s highest goal is your happiness. God wants you rich and healthy. Demons are lying spirits who want to destroy us body and soul and deceive us until the end. They are dead serious about this mission. We must be serious as well. We must know the truth and do all we can to spread it.

If the gospel lacks correspondence to reality, why is it that the majority of believers never comes to terms with this? As I expressed in my opening chapter, I am convinced it is not due to a lack of intelligence. Nor is it due to a lack of goodness or noble intentions on the part of most believers. Rather, from the perspective of one who has escaped the finely tuned clutches of the Christian machinery designed to keep me in the fold, I see it primarily as a lack of courage, at least for those who have encountered good reasons for doubting. I, like most believers, experienced serious doubts as a young Christian, but I lacked the courage to pit my reservations against the authority of the church and against its fallible, humanly authored scriptures, finding it safer to submit to the supremely well-crafted, guilt-inducing tactics of apologists who assured me that all the fault lay with me and not with the divinely inspired Bible. I capitulated and managed to hold my doubts at bay for over a decade longer while serving God on the mission field. Many if not most of you have faced similar questions and misgivings about the Bible and the Christian faith, even if not to the same extent. You might be like me during my initial short-lived crises of faith: I could not bring myself to face with courage the possibility that life might not have any cosmic Meaning; that there might be no higher power to guide, protect, and provide for me; that justice might not prevail in the long run; that I might no longer be able to hold sinners accountable with the words, "Thus says the Lord"; that life ends at the grave; or that I might have followed and lead others to follow a grand mistake. I lacked the courage to face my church, family, and friends whom I feared would look upon me as a reprobate. I lacked the courage to think for myself—to accept that the virtues of humility and meekness must not be used as an excuse for failing to challenge entrenched ideas that lack sufficient evidence. In short, I preferred to squelch the seed of doubt and label it as sin rather than as healthy, critical thinking, lest it flower and make life unbearable. That I viewed my incipient doubt and disbelief as sin was no accident: the church has a powerful vested interest in keeping believers in the fold, and it will not let them go without a fight. My courage-squelching guilt or angst was the result of a concerted effort developed over the centuries to make me feel like a depraved worm, a proud and willful rebel, a traitor, a God-hater, and an enemy of all that is good. I was programmed to consider that I would be better off if I were to commit adultery or murder than if I were to abandon the one who created me and redeemed me. Without Christ I would be worse than a good-for-nothing, and, like the traitor Judas, it would have been better for me had I never been born. No wonder most believers never muster the courage to break free from this cage!

...which brings up the concept of BOOK DRAGONS. NO LONGER ARE WE SIMPLE WORMS IN HIDING. FACE THE FIRE BITCH

Whatever a person writes comes from them. Whether consciously or unconsciously, it is the sum of their experience being shared. One need not poke at old wounds. Write honestly; the truth will emerge.

Anxiety swarms in the heart like worms infect the whole body.

The pogroms in Mainz, Worms, and Trier were an early expression of a new, more militant Christianity. The Civitas Dei—or God State—grew out of the wave of intense pietism that swept through Europe in the Central Middle Ages. The new state’s controlling metaphor was the body: just as its various limbs fit together into an organic whole, so, too, does—or should—Christian society. Inspired by this corporatist vision, the angry sword of orthodoxy struck out at dissident minorities, such as the Albigensian heretics of southern France and the Jews. Many aspects of modern anti-Semitism date from the period of the Civitas Dei. For

Can new inspiration spring from Buddhist cosmology's ashes? Let us look first at the idea of transmigration. Many modern people view it as outmoded, but I believe that it has many points relevant to the world today. The body of a dead worm returns to the earth, and its constituents change and become grass. This grass is eaten and becomes part of a cow, and eventually people eat the cow. Then they, too, return to the earth and become worms. If we pursued a single atom of nitrogen, we would probably find that it circulated among Gosāla's 1,406,600 kinds of living beings. People are born, and people die. They experience a variety of emotions such as anger, love, and hate, and die with their minds unsettled. They are followed, in turn, by others beginning their lives of anger, love, and hate. Human life is thus full of delusions, which actually have no absolute existence. Transmigration is the intuitive expression of this meaningless round of birth and death.

By virtue of his dominance over nature, man can also combine souls, and engraft the essence of one upon another. Thus he inspires that which his hands have worked on, and equips his implements with qualities calculated to render them useful in their calling. When be fastens a bunch of feathers to his arrow, he gives its flight the accuracy of a bird, perhaps also something of a bird's force in swooping on its prey; as surely as he gives himself a touch of birdnature by fastening feathers about his body. Or he may, in the strength of his artistic faculty, content himself with a presentment of nature. He chisels a serpent on his sword, lays “a blood-painted worm along the edge” so that it “winds its tail about the neck of the sword”, and then lets the sword “bite”. Or be may use another form of art, he can “sing” a certain nature into his weapon. He tempers it in the fire, forges it with art and craft, whets it, ornaments it, and “lays on it the word” that it shall be a serpent to bite, a fire to eat its way. So also he builds his ship with the experience of a shipbuilder, paints it, sets perhaps a beast at the prow, and commands that it shall tread sure-footed as a horse upon the water. Naturally, the mere words are not enough, if there is no luck in them; they take effect only if the speaker can make them whole. How he contrives to accomplish this is a question too deep to enter into here, but as we learn to know him, we may perhaps seize upon one little secret after another.

The good Lord even feeds the sparrow, but it has to get its little butt off the branch to get the worm.

We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glowworm.

Zoopharmacognosy is the long-winded scientific label for studying animal self-medication. You may have seen your pet cat or dog chewing on grass when it's unwell. Chemicals in animal-chosen medicinal plants have been shown to have antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, and antihelminthic (antiparasitic worm) properties. Wild chimps eat Vernonia amygdalina to rid themselves of intestinal parasites and aspilla leaves for rheumatism, viruses, and fungal infections. Other animals chew on charcoal and clay to neutralize food toxins and rub themselves wtih citrus, clematis, and piper for skin ailments. Pregnant elephants have been seen to walk miles to find a certain tree of the Boraginaceae family that brings on labor. There are undoubtedly many more remarkable opportunities to be understood and adapted.

The desert wind had stirred up evil odors from the fringe plantings which anchored the dunes at the cliff base. Fremen superstition gripped her: evil odors, evil times. She faced into the wind, saw a worm appear outside the plantings. It arose like the prow of a demon ship out of the dunes, threshed sand, smelled the water deadly to its kind, and fled beneath a long, burrowing mound. She hated the water then, inspired by the worm's fear. Water, once the spirit-soul of Arrakis, had become a poison. Water brought pestilence. Only the desert was clean.

They worm their way into our heads and touch us in a way that's more personal than any other school subject. Their lessons will sit quietly within us for years, until something awakens then: a particular set of experiences, a story in the news, maybe a personal crisis. When we reread them as adults, they can resonate with us in ways that we never dreamed of when we first met them.

She hated the water then, inspired by the worm's fear. Water, once the spirit-soul of Arrakis, had become a poison. Water brought pestilence. Only the desert was clean.