Beetles

Beetles are a diverse and wide-ranging class of insects in the order Coleoptera generally characterized by a particularly hard exoskeleton and hard forewings, and often an indistinct separation of body segments.

Quotes

• An inordinate fondness for beetles.
  • J. B. S. Haldane, a possibly apocryphal reply to theologians who inquired if there was anything that could be concluded about the Creator from the study of creation; as described in "Homage to Santa Rosalia, or why are there so many kinds of animals" by G. Evelyn Hutchinson in American Naturalist (May-June 1959); This alludes to the fact that there are more types of beetles than any other form of insect, and more insects than any other kind of animal.

• O'er folded blooms
  On swirls of musk,
  The beetle booms adown the glooms
  And bumps along the dusk.
  • James Whitcomb Riley, The Beetle; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 64.

• And often, to our comfort, shall we find
  The sharded beetle in a safer hold
  Than is the full-winged eagle.
  • William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), Act III, scene 3, line 19.

• And the poor beetle that we tread upon,
  In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
  As when a giant dies.
  • William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (1603), Act III, scene 1, line 79.