#grand

Perfect hexagonal tubes in a packed array. Bees are hard-wired to lay them down, but how does an insect know enough geometry to lay down a precise hexagon? It doesn't. It's programmed to chew up wax and spit it out while turning on its axis, and that generates a circle. Put a bunch of bees on the same surface, chewing side-by-side, and the circles abut against each other - deform each other into hexagons, which just happen to be more efficient for close packing anyway. ↗

— Peter Watts

#geometry #nature #nature-s-grandeur #nature

It was her last breakfast with Bapi, her last morning in Greece. In her frenetic bliss that kept her up till dawn, she’d scripted a whole conversation in Greek for her and Bapi to have as their grand finale of the summer. Now she looked at him contentedly munching on his Rice Krispies, waiting for the right juncture for launchtime. He looked up at her briefly and smiled, and she realized something important. This was how they both liked it. Though most people felt bonded by conversation, Lena and Bapi were two of a kind who didn’t. They bonded by the routine of just eating cereal together. She promptly forgot her script and went back to her cereal. At one point, when she was down to just milk, Bapi reached over and put his hand on hers. ‘You’re my girl,’ he said. And Lena knew she was. ↗

— Ann Brashares

#greece #language #contentment

Since the war, we're the only intelligent species left in the universe, therefore we think everything in this universe has to conform to our paradigm of what makes sense. Do you have any idea how arrogant that view is and on how little of this universe we base it? ↗

— Robert Buettner

#conformity #grand-picture #human-behavior #human-superiority #humankind

As a kid, my grandma would be dancing all the time. ↗

— Victor Cruz

#grandma #kid #time #would

Among these temples there is one which far surpasses all the rest, whose grandeur of architectural details no human tongue is able to describe; for within its precincts, surrounded by a lofty wall, there is room enough for a town of five hundred families. ↗

— Hernando Cortes

#among #architectural #describe #details #enough

My father died when I was young and I was raised by my grandmother, Emma Klonjlaleh Brown. We could afford to eat chicken just once a year, on Christmas. ↗

— George Weah

#brown #chicken #christmas #could #died

To be content, horse people need only a horse, or, lacking that, someone else who loves horses with whom they can talk. It was always that way with my grandfather. He took me places just so we could see horses, be near them. We went to the circus and the rodeo at Madison Square Garden. We watched parades down Fifth Avenue. Finding a horse, real or imagined, was like finding a dab of magic potion that enlivened us both. Sometimes I'd tell my grandfather about all the horses in my eleborate dreams. He'd lean over, smile, and assure me that, one day, I'd have one for real. And if my grandfather, my Opa, told me something was going to come true, it always did. ↗

— Allan J. Hamilton

#dreams #grandfathers #horses #love #magic

Everything necessary to understand my grandfather lies between two stories: the story of the tiger’s wife, and the story of the deathless man. These stories run like secret rivers through all the other stories of his life – of my grandfather’s days in the army; his great love for my grandmother; the years he spent as a surgeon and a tyrant of the University. One, which I learned after his death, is the story of how my grandfather became a man; the other, which he told to me, is of how he became a child again. ↗

— Téa Obreht

#stories #death

In the nineteenth century the more grandiose word inspiration began to replace the word idea in the arts. ↗

— Lukas Foss

#began #century #grandiose #idea #inspiration

When I love, I do it without counting. I give myself entirely. And each time, it is the grand love of my life. ↗

— Brigitte Bardot

#each #entirely #give #grand #i