fly quotes

It was prettily devised of Aesop,'The fly sat upon the axletree of the chariot-wheel and said, what a dust do I raise.'

- Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
  Essays, no.54,'Of  Vain-Glory'.

The days of our years arethreescore years and ten; and if by reasonof strengththey be fourscore years, yet istheir strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Psalms 90:10.

For, those that fly, may fight again, Which he can never do that's slain.

- Samuel Butler
  Hudibras, pt.3, canto 3, l.243^4.

Loving your neighbour as much as yourself is practically bloody impossible† You might as well have a commandment that states,'Thou shalt fly'.

-John Cleese
  In The Times.

He was an unzipped fly caught in forever amber.

- Richard Condon
  The Ecstasy Business, ch.1.

I throw myself down in my Chamber, and I call in, and invite God, and his Angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his Angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.

-John Donne
  Sermon preached at the funeral of Sir  William Cockayne, 12 Dec.

But as to risings, I can tell you why. It is on contradiction that they grow. It seemed the best thing to be up and go. Up was the heartening and the strong reply. The heart of standing is we cannot fly.

- Sir William Empson
  'Aubade'.

   Methinks I hear in accents low The sportive kind reply: Poor moralist! and what art thou? A solitary fly!

-Thomas Gray
  Ode on the Spring, l.41^4.

When one has had all his conceit taken out of him, when he has lost all his illusions, his feathers will soon soak through, and he will fly no more.

- Oliver Wendell Holmes
^8  The Autocrat of the Breakfast  Table, ch.1.

Onemust go after themodelling like a flycrawling overa piece of paper.

-Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
Attributed aphorism. Quoted in P  Vale  ry Degas, Danse, Dessin (1938).

A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

- Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
  Of Edwards's criticism of  Thomas Warburton. Quoted in James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.1.

A sportsman is a man who, every now and then, simply has to go out and kill something. Not that he's cruel. He wouldn't hurt a fly. It's not big enough.

- Stephen Butler Leacock
  My Remarkable Uncle.

   God in His wisdom made the fly And then forgot to tell us why.

- (Frederic) Ogden Nash
  Good Intentions,'The Fly'.

   All winter long, I am one for whom the bell is tolling; I can arouse no interest in basketball, Indoor fly casting or bowling; The sports pages are strictly no soap! And until the cry Play Ball! I simply mope.

- (Frederic) Ogden Nash
  Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

'I'll not hurt thee,'says my uncleToby, rising from his chair, and going across the room, with the fly in his hand, 'I'll not hurt a hair of thy head:Go,'says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape;'go, poor devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee?This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.'

- Laurence Sterne
^67  Tristram Shandy, bk.2, ch.12.

Was ist dein Ziel in der Philosophie?'Der Fliege den Ausweg aus dem Fliegenglas zeigen'. What is your aim in philosophy?To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.

- LudwigJosef Johann Wittgenstein
  Philosophische Untersuchungen (Philosophical Investigations), section 309 (translated by G E M Anscombe).

Our master Caesar is in the tent Where the maps are spread, His eyes fixed upon nothing, A hand under his head. 934 Like a long-legged fly upon the stream His mind moves upon silence.

-W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
  'Long-Legged Fly', l.5^10. Collected in Last Poems (1939).