Life & Wisdom Quote by Jean Henri Fabre

Fabre’s praise of wasps and bees lands like a polite provocation: if you want to see real “family values,” stop sentimentalizing humans and watch insects. The line’s sly power comes from how it hijacks an elevated, almost sermon-like “Let us turn elsewhere” and redirects it toward creatures most people treat as pests. He’s not being cute about nature; he’s reassigning moral authority.

The phrase “unquestionably come first” is doing heavy rhetorical work. It’s the voice of a man who has spent years observing, pinning, waiting, and recording, then daring his readers to dispute him. Fabre’s intent isn’t simply to marvel at instinct. He’s arguing for a kind of practical ethics rooted in behavior rather than self-mythology: wasps provision larvae; bees stockpile; the “heritage” is literal, edible, engineered. No speeches, no inheritance law, no family drama. Just labor that survives the parent.

“Heritage” also smuggles in a critique of bourgeois pride. Humans love to frame legacy as property, name, lineage, reputation. Fabre reframes it as preparation: what have you actually left that keeps the next generation alive? In the late 19th century, when industry and empire were busy congratulating themselves as “progress,” Fabre’s naturalism functions like a cold shower. The subtext: our species’ moral swagger looks flimsy next to insect competence.

There’s tenderness, too. By casting these animals as dutiful providers, he makes them legible, even admirable. It’s science writing with an edge: observation as an antidote to vanity.