"...we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest things, which are sweetness and light."

"The life of the bee is like a magic well,
the more you draw from it,
the more there is to draw."

"That buzzing noise means something. Now, the only reason for making a buzzing noise that I know of is because you are... a bee! And the only reason for being a bee is to make honey. And the only reason for making honey is so I can eat it."

"There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance."

"Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones."

"Not a single bee has ever sent you an invoice. And that is part of the problem – because most of what comes to us from nature is free, because it is not invoiced, because it is not priced, because it is not traded in markets, we tend to ignore it."

"Handle a book as a bee does a flower, extract its sweetness but do not damage it."

A work of arte; and yet no arte of man,
Can worke, this worke, these little creatures can

The men of experiment are like the ant; they only collect and use. But the bee…gathers its materials from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own.

The happiness of the bee and the dolphin is to exist. For man it is to know that and to wonder at it.