Worms

Even a worm will turn.
~ English proverb

Worms are many different distantly related bilateral animals that typically have a long cylindrical tube-like body, no limbs, and usually no eyes. Invertebrates commonly called "worms" include annelids, nematodes, flatworms, nemerteans, chaetognaths, priapulids, and insect larvae such as grubs and maggots.

B


  • O Rose thou art sick.
    The invisible worm,
    That flies in the night
    In the howling storm:

    Has found out thy bed
    Of crimson joy:
    And his dark secret love
    Does thy life destroy.

  • The generations of the worm
    Know not your loads piled on their soil;
    Their knotted ganglions shall wax firm
    Till your strong flagstones heave and toil.

C

So, Doctor Eye, perhaps some humans, rare humans, have mutated to have another sense—a spirit sense—and can perceive a world that is right on top of us, everywhere, just like the light on these worms.
~ Sofi Elizondo (Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey)
in I Origins
by Mike Cahill
  • Sofi: How many senses do worms have?
    Ian: They have two: smell and touch. Why?
    Sofi: So, they live without any ability to see or even know about light, right? The notion of light to them is unimaginable.
    Ian: Yeah.
    Sofi: But we humans, we know that light exists—all around them, right on top of them, they cannot sense it. But with a little mutation, they do. Right?
    Ian: Correct.
    Sofi: So, Doctor Eye, perhaps some humans, rare humans, have mutated to have another sense—a spirit sense—and can perceive a world that is right on top of us, everywhere, just like the light on these worms.
  • I would not enter on my list of friends,
    (Tho' grac'd with polish'd manners and fine sense,
    Yet wanting sensibility) the man
    Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.

D

  • As I was led to keep in my study during many months worms in pots filled with earth, I became interested in them, and wished to learn how far they acted consciously, and how much mental power they displayed.
    • Charles Darwin, The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms (1881) Introduction, pp. 2–3

F

The Body of
B. Franklin, Printer, ...
Lies here, Food for Worms.
~ Epitaph
by Benjamin Franklin
  • The Body of
    B. Franklin, Printer, ...
    Lies here, Food for Worms.

G

H

  •    The red-capp’d worm that’s shut
    Within the concave of a nut.
  • Fate has decreed that we shall be worms; so let us resign ourselves to being worms; nay... let us be worms with gusto, strenuously; let us make up our minds to be the best of all possible worms. For, after all, a good worm is better than that nondescript creature we become when we try to live above our station, in the world of wings. No amount of trying can convert a worm into even the worst of butterflies.
    • Aldous Huxley, "Spinoza's Worm", Do What You Will: Essays (London: Watts & Co, 1929) p. 51

K

  • But strength alone though of the Muses born
    Is like a fallen angel: trees uptorn,
    Darkness, and worms, and shrouds, and sepulchres
    Delight it; for it feeds upon the burrs,
    And thorns of life.
  • Man may live like a worm, but he writes like a god.
    • Imre Kertész, Felszámolás / Liquidation (2003; tr. Tim Wilkinson, 2004)

L

  • The worms they crept in, and the worms they crept out,
    And sported his eyes and his temples about.
    • Matthew Lewis, "Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogine", The Monk (1795)
  • All of these are finally transformed back into their primary substances, the Earth feeding the Plant, the Plant the Worm, the Worm the Bird, and often the Bird the Beast of Prey; Then finally the Beast of Prey is consumed the Bird of Prey, the Bird of Prey by the Worm, the Worm by the Herb, the Herb by the Earth: Man indeed, who turns everything to his needs, is often consumed by the Beast, the Bird, or the Fish which preys on him, by the Worm or the Earth. It is thus that everything circulates.
    • Carl Linnaeus, Nemesis Divina (1734), ed. M. J. Petry (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996)
  • "The nethermost caverns," wrote the mad Arab, "are not for the fathoming of eyes that see; for their marvels are strange and terrific. Cursed the ground where dead thoughts live new and oddly bodied, and evil the mind that is held by no head.  Wisely did Ibn Schacabao say, that happy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain, and happy the town at night whose wizards are all ashes.  For it is of old rumour that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where earth's pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl."

M

Every Golden Apple Corps is the beloved home of a Golden Worm.
~ The First Commandment
in Principia Discordia
by Malaclypse the Younger
Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.
~ Michel de Montaigne
in Book II of Essais
  • Every Golden Apple Corps is the beloved home of a Golden Worm.
    • Malaclypse the Younger (Gregory Hill), Principia Discordia (1965) The Five Commandments (The Pentabarf) no. 1
  • 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!
    • Henry Miller, published posthumously in Twinka Thiebaud (ed.) Reflections (Capra Press, 1981) p. 76
  • Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.

N

P

  • One day you're thinking and hauling yourself around, and the next, you're cold fertilizer, worm buffet.
  • But see, amid the mimic rout
      A crawling shape intrude!
    A blood-red thing that writhes from out
      The scenic solitude!
    It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
      The mimes become its food,
    And the angels sob at vermin fangs
      In human gore imbued.
  • And the angels, all pallid, and wan,
      Uprising, unveiling, affirm
    That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
      And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
    • Edgar Allen Poe, "The Conqueror Worm", st. 5, lines 5–8
  • I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.

S

They have made worm's meat of me.
~ Mercutio
in Romeo and Juliet
by William Shakespeare
A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
~  Hamlet
in Hamlet
by William Shakespeare
  • Keating: "Seize the day." "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may." Why does the writer use these lines?
    Charlie: Because he's in a hurry.
    Keating: No. Ding! Thank you for playing anyway. Because we are food for worms, lads. Because, believe it or not, each and every one of us in this room is one day going to stop breathing, turn cold, and die.
  • Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud?
  • Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs.
    • William Shakespeare, Richard II (c. 1595) Act III, Scene ii (King Richard)
  • They have made worm's meat of me.
  •    Here, here will I remain
    With worms that are thy chamber-maids.
    • William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597) Act IV, Scene iii (Romeo)
  • Hamlet: A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
    Claudius: What dost thou mean by this?
    Hamlet: Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.
    • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (c. 1599-1602) Act IV, Scene iii
  • Claudius: Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?
    Hamlet: At supper.
    Claudius: At supper! where?
    Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots.
    • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (c. 1599-1602) Act IV, Scene iii (Hamlet)
  •    She never told her love,
    But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
    Feed on her damask cheek.
    • William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, (c. 1601) Act II, Scene iv (Viola to Orsino)
  • The poet makes silk dresses out of worms.
    • Wallace Stevens, "Adagia", Opus Posthumous (1957)

V

  • I opened my eyes—and all the sea was ice-nine. The moist green earth was a blue-white pearl.
    The sky darkened. Borasisi, the sun, became a sickly yellow ball, tiny and cruel.
    The sky was filled with worms. The worms were tornadoes.

Y

  • The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave;
    The deep damp vault, the darkness, and the worm.

W

All you have to do is follow the worms
~ Pink Floyd
"Waiting for the Worms"
  • The face forgives the mirror
    The worm forgives the [plough
    The question begs the answer
    Can you forgive me somehow?
  • But it was only a fantasy
    The wall was too high, as you can see
    No matter how he tried, he could not break free
    And the worms ate into his brain.
  • Sitting in a bunker here behind my wall
    Waiting for the worms to come
    In perfect isolation here behind my wall
    Waiting for the worms to come.
  • All you have to do is follow the worms.

Proverbs

  • צו אַ וואָרעם אין כריין, די וועלט איז כריין‎‎. / Tsu a vorem in khreyn, di velt iz khreyn.

See also

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Category:Animals
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