Quotes about honey
page 3

“All the brands and flavors of Big Salvation. At the last minute we would devise a technological fix and save ourselves. Or: the Hypotheticals were benevolent beings who would turn the planet into a peaceable kingdom. Or: God would rescue us all, or at least the true believers among us. Or. Or. Or.
Big Salvation. It was a honeyed lie. A paper lifeboat, even if we were killing ourselves trying to cling to it. It wasn’t the Spin that had mutilated my generation. It was the lure and price of Big Salvation.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Spin

Source: Spin (2005), p. 340

God, Lie

“"If there's a buzzing-noise, somebody's making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise that I know of is because you're a bee."
Then he thought another long time, and said: "And the only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey."
And then he got up, and said: "And the only reason for making honey is so I can eat it." So he began to climb the tree.”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), Chapter One - Pooh.

Tree, Bee, Time

“Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?”

Rupert Brooke (1887–1915) British poet

"The Old Vicarage, Grantchester" (1912), concluding lines

Tea

“And here was another place and another girl. Oh, how lonely she was, from away back in Minnesota. A good family too. Sure, honey. Tell my tired ears about your good family.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Family, Girl

“She's got style and she's got her own money
So she's not another honey you can quickly disarm
She's got the eyes that make you realize
She won't be hypnotized by your usual charm.
You've got your plan of attack
That won't attract the modern woman
When you're an old fashioned man
She understands the things you're doin'
She's a modern woman.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Modern Woman.
Song lyrics, The Bridge (1986)

Money, Fashion, Understanding

“I hold the Prophet of Arabia in great esteem and I can quite understand that it would have been impossible to restrain and wean that illiterate and perverse race, sunk in the miasma of utter moral depravity, from committing the most heinous of crimes, and imbue its people with enthusiasm to strive after righteousness and assimilate high morals and virtues, without projecting such a terrible and intensely awe inspiring spectacle of Hell and an equally captivating and enticing image of a land flowing with milk and honey to represent Heaven before their vision.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Interview (April 1935) in The Genuine Islam, Vol. 1, No. 8 (1936), as quoted at "A Shavian and a Theologian" at World Islamic Mission http://www.wimnet.org/articles/shaviantheo.htm Disputed

People, Hell, Understanding

“Pooh always liked a little something at eleven o'clock in the morning, and he was very glad to see Rabbit getting out the plates and mugs; and when Rabbit said, "Honey or condensed milk with your bread?" he was so excited that he said, "Both," and then, so as not to seem greedy, he added, "But don't bother about the bread, please."”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), Chapter Two.

“I hold my honey and I store my bread
In little jars and cabinets of my will.
I label clearly, and each latch and lid
I bid, Be firm till I return from hell.”

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) American writer

"my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell"

Hell

“Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

How Software Companies Die

Secret, Way, Communication, Bee

“Who knows, my God, but that the universe is not one vast sea of compassion actually, the veritable holy honey, beneath all this show of personality and cruelty?”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

"The Origins of the Beat Generation" in Playboy (June 1959)

God, Universe, Personality, Sea

“Honey don't walk out, I'm too drunk to follow.
You know you won't feel this way tomorrow.
Well, maybe I'm a little rough around the edges,
Inside a little hollow.
I get faced with some things sometimes
That are so hard to swallow.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Rebels
Lyrics, Southern Accents (1985)

Way, Feeling

“There is a Karmic Rule of Kink (KROK), and it goes something like this: "Dump the honest foot fetishist and you will marry the dishonest necrophiliac." Break up with a guy over his relatively tame fetish — and a foot fetish is about as tame as they get — and KROK will make sure your next boyfriend is some lying corpsefucker who tells you only what you want to hear. ("Honestly, honey, I only like live girls!") Only after you've married the corpsefucker and had a few kids — once extricating yourself from the marriage becomes a hugely complicated ordeal — will he ask you to lie in a tub of ice until you're good and cold. And when you're lying in that tub of ice — and odds are you will, because you won't want to put your poor kids through a divorce — you'll remember that sweet, harmless foot fetishist whose heart you broke back in college, the man you could have married.”

Dan Savage (1964) American sex advice columnist and gay rights campaigner

Mary's Uterus http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=118733, Savage Love column, The Stranger, 14 December 2006

Marriage, Lie, Guy, Girl

“What could we call the moment before we begin to eat the honey? Some would call it anticipation, but we think it's more than that. We would call it awareness. It's when we become happy and realize it, if only for an instant. By Enjoying the Process, we can stretch that awareness out so that it's no longer a moment, but covers the whole thing. Then we can have a lot of fun. Just like Pooh.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Bisy Backson.
The Tao of Pooh (1982)

Happiness, Thinking

“Were there really this many women in 1985 saying to their husbands, "Gee, honey, I'd love to have random strangers masturbate to a jpeg image of me deepthroating a titanium dildo, but there's no medium for that. Guess we'll have to watch 'Falcon Crest.'”

Chuck Klosterman (1972) Author, Columnist

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs (2003)

Love, Women

“We dive deeper and deeper
Could be we are here
Could be in my dream
It came up on the horizon
Rising and rising
In a sea of honey, a sky of honey.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Source: Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sky of Honey (Disc 2)

Dreams, Sea

“And I rode along side
Till you lost me there
In the open road
And I rode along side
Till the honey spread
Itself so thin
For me to break your bread
For me to take your word
I had to steal it.”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

"A Sorta Fairytale".
Songs

“Honey, I love to go to parties,
And I like to have a good time,
But if it gets too pale after a while
Honey and I start looking to find
One good man.”

Janis Joplin (1943–1970) American singer and songwriter

One Good Man (1969)

Love, Time

“Well it's Saturday night you're all dressed up in blue.
I been watching you awhile, maybe you been watching me too.
So somebody ran out, left somebody's heart in a mess.
Well if you're looking for love, honey I'm tougher than the rest.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Tougher Than the Rest"
Song lyrics, Tunnel Of Love (1987)

Love, Heart, Night

“Nadine, honey is that you?
Oh, Nadine, honey is that you?
Seems like every time I see you
Darling, you got something else to do”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Nadine (Is It You?)" (1964)
Song lyrics

Time

“Maybe baby I'll have you,
Maybe baby you'll be true.
Maybe baby I'll have you for me. (All for me)It's funny honey you don't care-a-are,
You never listen to my prayer-a-yer,
Maybe baby you will love me someday”

Buddy Holly (1936–1959) American singer-songwriter

someday
Maybe Baby, written by Buddy Holly and Norman Petty (1957)
Song lyrics, Singles

Love, Baby

“When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Search, Bee

“Honey the party went away quickly, but thats the trouble with ticking and talking.”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

"The Party"
Actor (2009)

“It started when i heard your song of love
Pouring down like honey from above
I started to spin, i started to move
Just like a needle that is sticking through the same old groove”

Andy Partridge (1953) British musician

"Spinning Top".
White Music (1978)

Love

“Instead of passing blithely over into that Promised Land, flowing almost literally with milk and honey, it may be our destiny to wander a full 40 years or more in the wilderness of doubt and divided sentiments.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Part I, Chapter I, The Changing Role of Surplus Stocks, p. 4
Storage and Stability (1937)

“Cruel Love! You bear our death in murderous vials,
filled now with gall, now with your honeyed treasure—
equally fatal all that you ensure,
whether it be the sickness or the cure.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Canto IV, stanza 92 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Love, Death

“I have endowed everyone with a temperament of his own, given everyone an idiom of his own; so that what is praise for him is blame for thee, what is honey for him is poison for thee, what is light for him is fire for thee, what is rose for him is thorn for thee, what is good for him is evil for thee, what is beautiful for him is ugly for thee. In the people of Hindustan the idiom of Hindustan is praiseworthy; in the people of Sind, the idiom of Sind is praiseworthy. I do not see the outward and the speech; I see the inward and the state [of feeling]. For the heart is the substance and speech an accident. So, the accident is subservient, the substance is the [real] object. The religion of love stands apart from all religions. For lovers the [only] religion and creed is God.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Rumi, quoted from Harsh Narain, Myths of Composite Culture and Equality of Religions (1990) p. 20-21 https://archive.org/details/MythOfCompositeCultureHarshNarain

Love, God, People, Religion

“I have got my rape hat on, honey, but I always could accessorize.”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

"Talula".
Songs

“While borrowing it is like eating a meal of milk and honey. When the loan is due to be paid, it feels as if the bones in the body are broken.”

Sarvajna Kannada poet, pragmatist and philosopher

Tripadis

Feeling

“The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real… for a moment at least… that long magic moment before we wake. Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smoke-stacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?
We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the song the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever, somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.
They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to Middle Earth.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

The Faces of Fantasy (1996)

Love, Dreams, Color, Thinking

“Consider little children. There are not many of them not cute and lovable and precious, sweet as whipped honey and butter. So where do all the wicked people come from?”

Glen Cook The Black Company

Source: The Black Company (1984), Chapter 4, “Whisper” (p. 115)

Children, People

“Just let matters slide. How much better to accept each sweet drop of the honey that was Time, than to stoop to the vulgarity latent in every decision. However grave the matter at hand might be, if one neglected it for long enough, the act of neglect itself would begin to affect the situation, and someone else would emerge as an ally. Such was Count Ayakura's version of political theory.”

Yukio Mishima book Spring Snow

Spring Snow (1968), as translated by Michael Gallagher (1972).

Decision, Time

“When the honey’s out of the comb, there’s no putting it back.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Lini
(15 October 1993)

“A drop of honey can catch more flies than a gallon of gall.”

Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People

Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), p. 143 (in 1998 edition)

“a woman can
drop
out of your
life and
forget you
real fast.
a woman
can't go anywhere
but UP
after
leaving you,
honey.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

"pulled down shade"
The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992)

Life, Forgetting

“Brod’s life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release. Table, ivory elephant charm, rainbow, onion, hairdo, mollusk, Shabbos, violence, cuticle, melodrama, ditch, honey, doily … None of it moved her. She addressed her world honestly, searching for something deserving of the volumes of love she knew she had within her, but to each she would have to say, I don’t love you.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Everything Is Illuminated (2002)

Love, Life, Happiness, World

“What's the matter with the crowd I'm seeing?
"Don't you know that their out of touch?"
Should I try to be a straight 'A' student?
"If you are then you think too much.
Don't you know about the new fashion honey?
All you need are looks and a whole lotta money."
It's the next phase, new wave, dance craze, anyways
It's still rock and roll to me.
Everybody's talkin' 'bout the new sound
Funny, but it's still rock and roll to me.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

It's Still Rock and Roll to Me.
Song lyrics, Glass Houses (1980)

Money, Fashion, Thinking, Dance

“I really do appreciate the fact you're sittin' here.
Your voice sounds so wonderful,
But your face don't look too clear.
So, Barmaid, bring a pitcher, another round of brew.
Honey, why don't we get drunk and screw.”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

Why Don't We Get Drunk (and Screw)
Song lyrics, A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean (1973)

“Oh this heart's on fire.
Right from the start it's been burnin' for you.
Oh this heart's on fire.
One thing honey - this heart's true.”

Bryan Adams (1959) Canadian singer-songwriter

Hearts on Fire, Written by Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance
Song lyrics, Into the Fire (1987)

Heart

“It’s no go my honey love, it’s no go my poppet;
Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.
The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever,
But if you break the bloody glass you won’t hold up the weather.”

Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) poet

"Bagpipe Music", line 31

Love, Weather

“I'm a freak of nature
Freaky, geeky, lucky and weekly, sassefras, so, honey drink me finger licking.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Freak of Nature
Freak of Nature (2001)

Drink, Nature

“Welcome to my garage! This is where I go to get away from the honey-do list.”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

15° Off Cool (2007)

“Honey? Traffic's kinda busy and you're naked. Honey!?”

Bill Allred

Radio From Hell (April 14, 2006)

Business

“Just as the root feeds the tree, so humility feeds the soul. The spirit of humility is sweeter than honey, and whoever is fed by this sweetness produces fruit.”
Sicut radix portat arborem, sic humilitas animam. Spiritus humilitatis est super mel dulcis, quo qui regitur dulcia poma facit.

Anthony of Padua (1195–1231) Franciscan

Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (Part II: De bonae arboris fructificatione et de malae arboris excisione, par. 10)
Sermons

Soul, Tree

“Honey, beside me, you look like Tony Randall!”

Jayne Mansfield (1933–1967) American actress, singer, model

Remark to one of the Gabor sisters
Here They Are Jayne Mansfield (1992)

“On their date, my father said to Renee, "Tomorrow I'm going to come by your parents' house, pick you up, and we're going to go hunt for apartments. The three of us will live together and be a little family." It was really romantic at the drive-in, so this was all fabulous. He dropped her off at my grandparents' house. The next day, my mother waited and waited. He never came. He never called. Finally, she called her friend, Janet, who had recently married Nicolas' brother Gabriel. She asked if Janet had seen my father. "Oh honey, he's moved to California. He left this morning," Janet said.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

pg. 39-40
Pretty Mess book (2018)

Family, Parent, Waiting, Housing

“Behind the honeyed but patently absurd pleas for equality is a ruthless drive for placing themselves (the elites) at the top of a new hierarchy of power.”

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) American economist of the Austrian School, libertarian political theorist, and historian

Egalitarianism and the Elites (1995) http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/rae8_2_3.pdf.

“I love you more than bears love honey,
I love you more than Jews love money,
I love you more than Asians are good at math.
I love you even if it's not hip,
I love you more than black guys don't tip,
I love you like Puerto Ricans need baths.”

Sarah Silverman (1970) American comedian and actress

Satirical song
Jesus Is Magic (2005)

Love, Money, Guy

“Susan [Silver] gives me a huge amount of room to be that recluse, and also the incentive to not be. It’s worth a lot to see her be excited about being around someone who’s not afraid of his shadow. It’s good for her. She digs it. But we’re becoming more alike. When she comes home to me from a day at the office, where she’s talking to people from all over the world about all sorts of important things… well, I probably haven’t answered the phone in seventy-two hours. She knows that when she comes home she’s going to get privacy, because I’m not like ‘These are my South American friends and… honey, have you ever really listened to that first Van Halen album?’ She’s the best roommate I’ve ever had. People are sort of perplexed, as to how this could possibly work in this grunge-music, super-druggy era where everybody is so emotionally screwed up. Not only is Soundgarden not OD’ing on heroin, but the singer’s wife manages the band, there’s no weird Yoko Ono trip, and she’s not trying to make us dress up like lions and unicorns.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

When asked if intimacy is an issue in his marriage to Soundgarden's manager Susan Silver ** Interview with Details Magazine, December 1996 https://pitchfork.com/features/article/10081-chris-cornell-searching-for-solitude/, Soundgarden Era

People, World, Music, Home

“Love is very fruitful both of honey and gall.”
Amor et melle et felle est faecundissimus.

Plautus Cistellaria

Cistellaria, Act I, scene 1, line 70
Cistellaria (The Casket)

Love

“Now, Michael is claiming racism. I'm going, "Honey, you gotta pick a race first." Baby, what are you claiming, mistreatment of elves? What are you saying?”

Robin Williams (1951–2014) American actor and stand-up comedian

Robin Williams: Live on Broadway (2002)

Baby

“You're a little honey and you're quite a dish.
Saturday night we're goin' fishin' to fish.”

Tex Atchison (1912–1982) American musician

Song We're Gonna Go Fishin'

Fish, Night

“Honey can you reach the spots that need oiling and fixing.
H E L P Help Me.”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

"Marrow"
Actor (2009)

Help

“I've never left Ireland, really, you know you come here, come to America, I mean for Irish people America is kind of a promise land" … "It's the milk and honey ya know and we've always had this feeling for this country and the country I think has a feeling for our band”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

CNN Larry King Weekend (2002)

People, Feeling, Thinking, Country

“The English mind was like the London drawing room, a comfortable and easy spot, filled with bits and fragments of incoherent furnitures, which were never meant to go together, and could be arranged in any relation without making a whole, except by the square room. Philosophy might dispute about innate ideas till the stars died out in the sky, but about innate tastes no one, except perhaps a collie-dog, has the right to doubt; least of all the Englishman, for his tastes are his being; he drifts after them as unconsciously as a honey-bee drifts after his flowers.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Dogs, Star, Flowers, Idea

“Dad, are we scared?' said Sunshine. 'No, honey. It's an adventure.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 51

“Now if there's a smile on my face,
It's only there tryin' to fool the public,
But when it comes down to foolin' you;
Now honey, that's quite a different subject.
But don't let my glad expression
Give you the wrong impression.
Really I'm sad.
I'm sadder than sad.
You're gone and I'm hurtin' so bad.
Like a clown I pretend to be glad.”

Smokey Robinson (1940) American R&B singer-songwriter and record producer

The Tears of a Clown, written by Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, and Hank Cosby (1970)
Song lyrics, With The Miracles

Sadness, Smile, Fools

“On the tongue of such an one they shed a honeyed dew, and from his lips drop gentle words.”

Hesiod Greek poet

Source: The Theogony (c. 700 BC), line 82.

“One good man,
Oh ain’t much, honey ain’t much,
It’s only everything…”

Janis Joplin (1943–1970) American singer and songwriter

One Good Man (1969)

“Smooth are his words, his voice as honey sweet,
Yet war is in his heart, and dark deceit!”

Moschus Ancient Greek poet

'The Stray Cupid', tr. R. Polwhele, lines 14–15
Compare: "The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart: his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords." Psalm 55:21 (KJV)
The Idylliums of Moschus, Idyllium I

War, Heart

“From whose lips the streams of words ran sweeter than honey.”

Homér Iliad

I. 249 (tr. Richmond Lattimore); of Nestor.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“O violet-tressed Sappho chaste,
O maid with honeyed smile!
I fain would tell what is in my breast,
Did shame me not beguile.”

Alcaeus of Mytilene (-600–-560 BC) ancient Greek poet

"To Sappho", as translated by Walter Petersen

Smile

“Every sleepy light
Must say goodbye
To the day before it dies
In a sea of honey
A sky of honey
Keep us close to your heart
So if the skies turn dark
We may live on in
Comets and stars.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sky of Honey (Disc 2)

Star, Light, Heart, Sea

“208. The honey is sweet, but the bee stings.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Bee

“All I knew of Israel growing up was that they’ve been the hot-bed of militant violence forever. Abraham’s god of infinite love, forgiveness, and mercy spawned three major faiths, all of whom have been at war with each other, each since their inception, and it seems that God’s spyglass of magnified torment was usually focused right there. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has read the Old Testament and noticed the patterns therein. If YHWH promised a holy land to his chosen people, they should expect more damnation than paradise. That would be consistent with the Bible’s blood-stained stories, and that’s the way we’ve always seen it on the news in my country. There would be less milk and honey, and more uprisings and explosions, especially when it means mixing or displacing so many fundamentally polarized religious and cultural groups. If I have not been completely mislead by the media, then maybe that’s why there are so many atheists in that area now.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"on the Israeli atheist convention" http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2013/01/13/on-the-israeli-atheist-convention/, Patheos (January 13, 2013) Patheos

Love, God, War, People

“Love without fear and trepidation is fire without flame and heat, day without sun, comb without honey, summer without flowers, winter without frost, sky without moon, a book without letters.”

Chrétien de Troyes Cligès

Amors sanz crieme et sans peor
Est feus sanz flame et sanz chalor,
Jorz sanz soloil, bresche sanz miel,
Estez sans flor, iverz sanz giel,
Ciaus sanz lune, livres sanz letre.
Cligès, line 3893.

Love, Books, Fear, Flowers

“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)

Flowers, Business, Bee

“My dog lay dead five days without a grave
In the thick of summer, hid in a clump of pine
And a jungle of grass and honey-suckle vine.”

Richard Wilbur (1921–2017) American poet

The Pardon
Context: My dog lay dead five days without a grave
In the thick of summer, hid in a clump of pine
And a jungle of grass and honey-suckle vine.
I who had loved him while he kept alive
Went only close enough to where he was
To sniff the heavy honeysuckle-smell
Twined with another odor heavier still
And hear the flies' intolerable buzz.

Dogs, Grass, Summer, Dead

“They got alchemy.
They turn the roses into gold
They turn the lilac into honey
They're making love for the peaches.

And they'll do it,
Do it for you.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Singles and rarities

Love, Making love

“An economic civilisation troubles itself about the universe much as a hive of honey-bees troubles about the ocean, only as a region to be avoided. The hive of Saint Thomas sheltered God and Man, Mind and Matter, The Universe and the Atom, the One and the Multiple, within the walls of a harmonious home.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)
Context: Saint Thomas is still alive and overshadows as many schools as he ever did; at all events as many as the Church maintains. He has outlived Descartes and Leibnitz and a dozen other schools of philosophy more or less serious in their day. He has mostly outived Hume, Voltaire and the militant sceptics. His method is typical and classic; his sentences, when interpreted by the Church, seem, even to an untrained mind, intelligible and consistent; his Church Intellectual remains practically unchanged, and, like the Cathedral of Beauvais, erect although the storms of six or seven centuries have prostrated, over and over again, every other social or political or juristic shelter. Compared with it, all modern systems are complex and chaotic, crowded with self-contradictions, anomalies, impracticable functions and out-worn inheritances; but beyond all their practical shortcomings is their fragmentary character. An economic civilisation troubles itself about the universe much as a hive of honey-bees troubles about the ocean, only as a region to be avoided. The hive of Saint Thomas sheltered God and Man, Mind and Matter, The Universe and the Atom, the One and the Multiple, within the walls of a harmonious home.

God, Home, Universe, Bee

“And what is the end of the whole matter? As if honey could taste itself and all its drops together and all its drops could taste each other and each the whole honeycomb as itself, so should the end be with God and the soul of man and the universe.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)

God, Soul, Universe

“I have seen a thousand sunsets and sunrises, on land where it floods forest and mountains with honey coloured light, at sea where it rises and sets like a blood orange in a multicoloured nest of cloud, slipping in and out of the vast ocean. I have seen a thousand moons: harvest moons like gold coins, winter moons as white as ice chips, new moons like baby swans’ feathers.”

Gerald Durrell (1925–1995) naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter

Letter to his fiancée Lee, (31 July 1978), published in Gerald Durrell: An Authorized Biography by Douglas Botting (1999)
Context: I have seen a thousand sunsets and sunrises, on land where it floods forest and mountains with honey coloured light, at sea where it rises and sets like a blood orange in a multicoloured nest of cloud, slipping in and out of the vast ocean. I have seen a thousand moons: harvest moons like gold coins, winter moons as white as ice chips, new moons like baby swans’ feathers.
I have seen seas as smooth as if painted, coloured like shot silk or blue as a kingfisher or transparent as glass or black and crumpled with foam, moving ponderously and murderously. … I have known silence: the cold earthy silence at the bottom of a newly dug well; the implacable stony silence of a deep cave; the hot, drugged midday silence when everything is hypnotised and stilled into silence by the eye of the sun; the silence when great music ends.
I have heard summer cicadas cry so that the sound seems stitched into your bones. … I have seen hummingbirds flashing like opals round a tree of scarlet blooms, humming like a top. I have seen flying fish, skittering like quicksilver across the blue waves, drawing silver lines on the surface with their tails. I have seen Spoonbills fling home to roost like a scarlet banner across the sky. I have seen Whales, black as tar, cushioned on a cornflower blue sea, creating a Versailles of fountain with their breath. I have watched butterflies emerge and sit, trembling, while the sun irons their winds smooth. I have watched Tigers, like flames, mating in the long grass. I have been dive-bombed by an angry Raven, black and glossy as the Devil’s hoof. I have lain in water warm as milk, soft as silk, while around me played a host of Dolphins. I have met a thousand animals and seen a thousand wonderful things… but —
All this I did without you. This was my loss.
All this I want to do with you. This will be my gain.
All this I would gladly have forgone for the sake of one minute of your company, for your laugh, your voice, your eyes, hair, lips, body, and above all for your sweet, ever surprising mind which is an enchanting quarry in which it is my privilege to delve.

Mountain, Light, Winter, Baby

“Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose,
Nothing don’t mean nothing honey if it ain’t free…”

Janis Joplin (1943–1970) American singer and songwriter

"Me and Bobby McGee" another of her greatest hits, the song was actually written by Kris Kristofferson, and first released as sung by Roger Miller
Misattributed
Context: Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose,
Nothing don’t mean nothing honey if it ain’t free...
And feeling good was easy, lord, when he sang the blues.
You know feeling good was good enough for me,
Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee.

Freedom

“Milk, barley, wheat, cereals, butter, cheese, tomatoes, honey, dates, fruits, almonds, and sugar-candy are all Sattvic food-stuffs. They render the mind pure and calm and play a very important part in the practices of spiritual aspirants, in the mental development of the student, and in the personality- power of the leaders of mankind.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

Food, Parting, Personality

“Having women work with men is like having a grizzly bear work with salmon... dipped in honey.”

Patrice O'Neal (1969–2011) American stand-up comedian, radio personality, and actor

Stand Up

Women, Men

“The highest food is the vomit of bees, we know it as honey.”

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111) Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic

Food, Bee

“While the galleries were all applausive of heart, and the Fourth Estate looked with eyes enlightened, as if you had touched its lips with a staff dipped in honey,—I have sat with reflections too ghastly to be uttered.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

Heart

“Dawn has come at last,
Twenty-five years, honey just in one night, oh yeah.
Well, Im twenty-five years older now
So I know we can't be right
And Im no better, baby,
And I cant help you no more
Than I did when just a girl.”

Janis Joplin (1943–1970) American singer and songwriter

"Kozmic Blues", co-written with Gabriel Mekler
I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! (1969)

Girl, Help, Baby, Night

“Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose,
Nothing don’t mean nothing honey if it ain’t free...
And feeling good was easy, lord, when he sang the blues.
You know feeling good was good enough for me,
Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee.”

Janis Joplin (1943–1970) American singer and songwriter

"Me and Bobby McGee" another of her greatest hits, the song was actually written by Kris Kristofferson, and first released as sung by Roger Miller
Misattributed

Feeling, Freedom

“Why shouldn’t I eat toothpaste? It’s a free world. Why shouldn’t I chew my toenails? i happen to have trodden in some honey. Why shouldn’t I prance across central park with delicate sideways leaps? I know what your answer will be: “it isn’t done.””

Derek Parfit book Reasons and Persons

But it’s no earthly use just saying it isn’t done. If there’s a reason why it isn’t done, give the reason—if there’s no reason, don’t attempt to stop me doing it. All other things being equal, the mere fact that something “isn’t done” is in itself an excellent reason for doing it.

p.101
Reasons and Persons (1984)

World

“As the only black kid in my primary school playground, animals had become my friends. By 15 I was vegan, although I didn't give up honey until 16. For a while my mother thought it was just "a rasta phase."”

Benjamin Zephaniah (1958) English poet and author

… I can honestly say I've not been tempted to give up veganism in 27 years. I sometimes smell a chip shop and like the smell but then feel guilty because fish might be part of it. But I'll go home and make vegan chips. After all these years, my favourite food is my mother's butter bean stew with whole potatoes, yam and dasheen. I don't think I've ever made a meal for her, to be honest. I think she would consider it a failing of her motherhood and say "Boy, get out the kitchen." "Interview: Benjamin Zephaniah" by John Hind, TheGuardian.com (18 July 2010) https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/18/benjamin-zephaniah-life-on-a-plate

School, Animals