“As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.”

— Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 9.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys." by Orson Scott Card?

Orson Scott Card 586

American science fiction novelist 1951

Related quotes

“Fairest Isle, all isles excelling,
Seat of pleasures, and of loves;
Venus here will choose her dwelling,
And forsake her Cyprian groves.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

King Arthur (1691), Act II scene v, 'Song of Venus.

“Tis the pest
Of love, that fairest joys give most unrest.”

John Keats Endymion

Bk. II, l. 365
Endymion (1818)

“The fairest garden in her looks,
And in her mind the wisest books.”

Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) British writer

The Garden, i; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“He said, we'll take us into town, lay our money down
I'll bring you the sweetest thing that grows
Because the fairest ones in sight are bloomin every night
At a tavern called the Sabre and the Rose..”

Kris Kristofferson (1936) American country music singer, songwriter, musician, and film actor

Sabre and the Rose
Song lyrics, Easter Island (1978)

“The butterfly in a caterpillar: the eagle in an egg; the saint in a selfish human being.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Genius
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Context: A writer arrived at the monastery to write a book about the Master.
"People say you are a genius. Are you?" he asked.
"You might say so." said the Master, none too modestly.
"And what makes one a genius?" "The ability to recognize." "Recognize what?"
"The butterfly in a caterpillar: the eagle in an egg; the saint in a selfish human being."

“Love may be the fairest gem which Society has filched from Nature; but what is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood? A smile has dried my tears.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

L’amour est le plus joli larcin que la Société ait su faire à la Nature; mais la maternité, n’est-ce pas la Nature dans sa joie? Un sourire a séché mes larmes.
Part I, ch. XXVIII.
Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842)

“She fell as falls the rose in spring,
The fairest are ever most perishing,
Yet lingers that tale of sorrow and love,
Of the Christian maid and her Moslem love;
A tale to be told in the twilight hour,
For the beauty's tears in her lonely bower.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Golden Violet - The Wreath
The Golden Violet (1827)

“My biggest fault is that the faults I was born with grow bigger each year. It's like I was raising chickens inside of me. The chickens lay their eggs and the eggs hatch into other chickens, which then lay eggs.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 13, The Rat's First Letter

“As we did without clergy, let us do without soldiers. The joy built upon successful slaughter is not the right kind of joy; it will not do; it is fearful and it is trivial. A boundless and generous contentment, a magnanimous triumph felt not against some outer enemy but in communion with the finest and fairest in the souls of all men everywhere and the splendor of the world’s summer: this is what swells the hearts of the people of Omelas, and the victory they celebrate is that of life.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” p. 255 (originally published in New Dimensions 3, edited by Robert Silverberg)
Short fiction, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (1975)

“With books and money plac'd for show
Like nest-eggs to make clients lay,
And for his false opinion pay.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto III, line 624
Source: Hudibras, Part III (1678)

“As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Orson Scott Card 586

Related quotes

Related topics