Common Wasp

Famous quotes containing the words common and/or wasp:

    The inspired scribbler always has the gift for gossip in our common usage ... he or she can always inspire the commonplace with an uncommon flavor, and transform trivialities by some original grace or sympathy or humor or affection.
    Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)

    Why should the generations overlap one another at all? Why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty thousand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, and wake up, as the Sphinx wasp does, to find that its papa and mamma have not only left ample provision at its elbow but have been eaten by sparrows some weeks before we began to live consciously on our own accounts?
    Samuel Butler (1835–1902)