Dragonflies Quotes

Unless you are here: this garden refuses to exist. Pink dragonflies fall from the air and become scorpions scratching blood out of rocks. The rainbows that dangle upon this mist: shatter. Like the smile of a child separated from his mother’s milk for the very first time. --from poem Blood and Blossoms

Twisting through the thorn-thick underbrush, scratched and exhausted, one turns suddenly to find an unexpected waterfall, not half a mile from the nearest road, a spot so hard to reach that no one comes a hiding place, a shrine for dragonflies and nesting jays, a sign that there is still one piece of property that won't be owned.

All these words, words like 'evil' and 'vicious', they meant nothing to Nature. Yes, evil was a human invention.

He was becoming unstuck, he was sure of that - his bones were no longer wrapped in flesh but in clouds of dust, in hummingbirds, dragonflies, and luminous moths - but so perfect was his equilibrium that he felt no fear. He was vast, he was many, he was dynamic, he was eternal.

Smile / to see the lake / lay / the still sky / And / out for an easy / make / the dragonfly.

Perhaps everything lies in knowing what words to speak, what actions to perform, and in what order and rhythm; or else someone's gaze, answer, gesture is enough; it is enough for someone to do something for the sheer pleasure of doing it, and for his pleasure to become the pleasure of others: at that moment, all spaces change, all heights, distances; the city is transfigured, becomes crystalline, transparent as a dragonfly.

Reflected in the dragonfly's eye -- mountains.

Time is for dragonflies and angels. The former live too little and the latter live too long.

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame

It's very far away/It takes about a half a day to get there/ If we travel by-dragonfly.

This dragonfly came up to me. He was hovering right in front of my face, and I was really examining him, thinking, How does he see me? I became enlightened.

I got to keep a clip for my hair. It had a pretty little dragonfly on it and I got to keep it

Question four: What book would you give to every child? Answer: I wouldn't give them a book. Books are part of the problem: this strange belief that a tree has nothing to say until it is murdered, its flesh pulped, and then (human) people stain this flesh with words. I would take children outside and put them face to face with chipmunks, dragonflies, tadpoles, hummingbirds, stones, rivers, trees, crawdads. That said, if you're going to force me to give them a book, it would be The Wind In The Willows, which I hope would remind them to go outside.

Yesterday a child came out to wonder Caught a dragonfly inside a jar Fearful when the sky was full of thunder And tearful at the falling of a star

I need to capture my sprite with trembling hands. Except I could crush her. Wonder how many small things of beauty - flowers, seashells, dragonflies - have met such a demise. Wonder how much fragile love has collapsed beneath the weight of confession.

So, that was Nature's way. The mosquito felt pain and panic but the dragonfly knew nothing of cruelty. Humans would call it evil, the big dragonfly destroying the mosquito and ignoring the little insects suffering. Yet humans hated mosquitoes too, calling them vicious and bloodthirsty. All these words, words like 'evil' and 'vicious', they meant nothing to Nature. Yes, evil was a human invention.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragonfly Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky.

Who would deduce the dragonfly from the larva, the iris from the bud, the lawyer from the infant? ...We are all shape-shifters and magical reinventors. Life is really a plural noun, a caravan of selves.

Their love as a dragonfly, skimming over echo park, stoppin to visit the lotus. Eating dreams and drinking blue sky.

Sitting on the floor of a room in Japan, looking out on a small garden with flowers blooming and dragonflies hovering in space, I suddenly felt as if I had been too long above my boots.

The point of the dragonfly's terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows,is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn'tbut that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, finged tangle. Freedom is the world's water and weather, the world's nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz.

Without constraint, without any form of mental compulsion, the act of belief becomes the freest possible projection of what resides in our hearts. Like the poet's image of a church bell that reveals its latent music only when struck, or a dragonfly that flames forth its beauty only in flight, so does the content of a human heart lie buried until action calls it forth. The greatest act of self-revelation occurs when we choose what we will believe, in that space of freedom that exists between knowing that a thing is and knowing that a thing is not.

...The girls chirped and chatted like uncaged warblers. They were delirious with joy... Intoxications of life’s morning! Enchanted years! The wing of a dragonfly trembles! Oh, reader, whoever you may be, do you have such memories? Have you walked in the underbrush, pushing aside branches for the charming head behind you? Have you slid laughing, down some slope wet with rain, with the woman you loved?

If you are old and you wish to be young again, if only for a moment, try and identify a dragonfly.

Go to sleep, baby,Mama will sing. Of blue butterflies, and dragonfly wings. Moonlight and sunbeams, raiments so fine. Silver and gold, for baby of mine. Go to sleep, baby. Sister will tell, of wolves and of lambs, and demons who fell.-Pierce's Lullaby Kim Harrison (Black Magic Sanction)

Clouds of insects danced and buzzed in the golden autumn light, and the air was full of the piping of the song-birds. Long, glinting dragonflies shot across the path, or hung tremulous with gauzy wings and gleaming bodies.

Whoever the kid had been, whoever had the grand attitude, has finally heeded the admonishment of parents, teachers, governments, religions, and the law: "You just change your attitude now please, young man." This transformation in kids - from flashing dragonflies, so to say, to sticky water-surface worms slowly slipping downstream - is noticed with pride by society and with mortification by God, which is a fantastic way of saying I don't like to see kids throw away their truth just because it isn't worth a dime in the open market.

I'll be looking for you, Will, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we'll cling together so tight that nothing and no one'll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you... We'll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams... And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they wont' just be able to take one, they'll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we'll be joined so tight.

The beauteous dragonfly's dancing By the waves of the rivulet glancing; She dances here and she dances there, The glimmering, glittering flutterer fair. Full many a beetle with loud applause Admires her dress of azure gauze, Admires her body's bright splendour, And also her figure so slender...

Anyone can buy a car or a night on the town. Most of us shell our days like peanuts. One in a thousand can look at the world with amazement. I don't mean gawking at the Chrysler Building. I'm talking about the wing of a dragonfly. The tale of the shoeshine. Walking through an unsullied hour with an unsullied heart

Sophia and Grandmother sat down by the shore to discuss the matter further. It was a pretty day, and the sea was running a long, windless swell. It was on days just like this--dog days--that boats went sailing off all by themselves. Large, alien objects made their way in from sea, certain things sank and others rose, milk soured, and dragonflies danced in desperation. Lizards were not afraid. When the moon came up, red spiders mated on uninhabited skerries, where the rock became an unbroken carpet of tiny, ecstatic spiders.

And in time it will be as though men had never come to this perfect corner of the world-never called it paradise on earth, never despoiled it with their dream factories; and in the golden hush of the afternoon all that will be heard will be the flittering of dragonflies, and the murmur of hummingbirds as they pass from bower to bower, looking for a place to sup sweetness.