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The vessel, though her masts be firm,
Beneath her copper bears a worm.
--
Monday, Though All the Fates Should Prove Unkind, st. 2

 

Henry David Thoreau

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The worm stood straight on God's blood-splattered threshold then
and beat his drum, beat it again, and raised his throat:
'You've matched all well on earth, wine, women, bread, and song,
but why, you Murderer, must you slay our children? Why?'
God foamed with rage and raised his sword to pierce that throat,
but his old copper sword, my lads, stuck at the bone.
Then from his belt the worm drew his black-hilted sword,
rushed up and slew that old decrepit god in heaven!
And now, my gallant lads — I don't know when or how —
that worm's god-slaying sword has fallen into my hands;
I swear that from its topmost iron tip the blood still drips!

 

Nikos Kazantzakis

 

Through it all I learned the value of being humble to the dust, reduced to ashes. Everyone should experience that. Before you can recognize you're somebody, you have to know you're nobody. [-] The butterfly was just a lowly worm in its beginning. The worm didn't live with the moment-to-moment expectation of sprouting wings and taking flight. He lived a useful and productive life, the life of a worm. And he had to die a worm in order to be born as an angel! The spinning of the cocoon is, in and of itself, remarkable. It is as wondrous as the emergence and first flight of the butterfly.

 

Henry Miller

 

This was the first time Remington rifles were used in the Argentine, and it tickles my fancy to think that the firm that shaves me every morning bears the same name as the one that killed my grandfather.

 

Jorge Luis Borges

 

Lord Copper quite often gave banquets; it would be an understatement to say that no one enjoyed them more than the host, for no one else enjoyed them at all, while Lord Copper positively exulted in every minute.

 

Evelyn Waugh

 

I've fought with men and gods, I've weighed them well and found
the sea more firm than earth, the air more firm than sea,
and man's impalpable soul still yet more firm than air!

 

Nikos Kazantzakis