“It is not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is praised. The mosquito is swatted.”

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is praised. The mosquito is swatted." by Mary O'Connor?

Related quotes

“A comely olde man as busie as a bee.”

John Lyly (1554–1606) English politician

Source: Euphues and his England, P. 252.

William Blake photo

“The busy bee has no time for sorrow.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 11

Oprah Winfrey photo
Peter Thiel photo

“How much of what you know about business is shaped by mistaken reactions to past mistakes?”

Peter Thiel (1967) American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager

Source: ZERO to ONE

Richard Stallman photo

“Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

"How to fight software patents - singly and together", Newsforge (9 September 2004)
2000s

Isaac Watts photo

“How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower!”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Song 20: "Against Idleness and Mischief". Parodied by Lewis Carroll in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
1710s, Divine Songs Attempted in the Easy Language of Children (1715)

“A busy buzzing bee is a lot like me, it works and it lives in community.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"A Busy Buzzing Bee"
A Picnic of Poems in Allah's Green Garden (2011)

Kin Hubbard photo

“Bees are not as busy as we think they are. They jest can't buzz any slower.”

Kin Hubbard (1868–1930) cartoonist

As quoted in Reading I've Liked : A Personal Selection Drawn from Two Decades of Reading (1941) by Clifton Fadiman, p. 827.
Variants:
A bee is never as busy as it seems; it's just that it can't buzz any slower.
As quoted in The Modern Handbook of Humor (1967) by Ralph Louis Woods, p. 17
The bee isn't really that busy — it just can't buzz any slower.
As quoted in Peter's People (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 29.

Niki Lauda photo

“Why are students learning business from business professors whose businesses failed?”

Christian Canlubo (2002) Filipino Internet Entrepreneur

Christian Canlubo on his twitter https://twitter.com/canlubochris account.

Source: https://twitter.com/canlubochris/status/1236684517823283200 | Christian Canlubo personal Twitter account

Related topics