Insects, Spiders and Harry Potter

The seven books about Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling are so famous that they don't need an introduction. While (re)reading them I collected some quotes about spiders and insects, and some other phrases that I liked best. Most of the books are heavily infested with spiders, and the best quotes are always from Dumbledore.

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1 - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Spiders		Harry was used to spiders, because the cupboard under the stairs was full of them, and that was where he slept.
Moth		Aunt Petunia found a few mouldy blankets in the second room and made up a bed for Dudley on the moth-eaten sofa.
Flies		... Our head could do with filling With some interesting stuff, For now they're bare and full of air, Dead flies and bits of fluff, ...
Dumbledore		"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that."
Dumbledore		"After all, to the well-organised mind, death is but the next great adventure."
Dumbledore		"The truth." ... "It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution."

2 - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Dung beetles		Underage wizards weren't allowed to use magic outside school. Harry hadn't told the Dursleys this; he knew it was only their terror that he might turn them all into dung beetles that stopped them locking him in the cupboard under the stairs with his wand and broomstick.
Flea		"There are rumours about a new Muggle Protection Act - no doubt that flea-bitten, Muggle-loving fool Arthur Weasley is behind it -"
Spiders		He had emerged into a dingy alleyway that seemed to be made up entirely of shops devoted to the Dark Arts. The one he'd just left, Borgin and Burkes, looked like the largest, but opposite was a nasty window display of shrunken heads, and two doors down, a large cage was alive with gigantic black spiders.
Beetle		Everything Harry had learned last year seemed to have leaked out of his head during the summer. he was supposed to be turning a beetle into a button, but all he managed to do was give his beetle a lot of exercise as it scuttle over the desk top avoiding his wand.
Moth		Thinking that he should probably wait for Filch to come back, Harry sank into a moth-eaten chair next to the desk.
Spider		Hermione was pointing at the topmost pane, where around twenty spiders were scuttling, apparently fighting to get through a small crack in the glass. A long silvery thread was dangling like a rope, as though they had all climbed it in their hurry to get outside. "Have you ever seen spiders act like that?" said Hermione wonderingly. "No," said Harry, "have you, Ron? Ron?" He looked over his shoulder. Ron was standing well back, and seemed to be fighting the impulse to run. "What's up?" said Harry. "I - don't -like - spiders." said Ron tensely. "I never knew that." said Hermione, looking at Ron in surprise. "You've used spiders in potions loads of times ..." "I don't mind them dead," said Ron, who was carefully looking anywhere but at the window, "I just don't like the way they move ..." Hermione giggled. "It's not funny," said Ron, fiercely. "If you must know, when I was three, Fred turned my - my teddy bear into a dirty great spider because I broke his toy broomstick." ...
Lacewing		"This is the most complicated potion I've ever seen." said Hermione, as they scanned the recipe. "Lacewing flies, leeches, fluxweed and knotgrass," she murmured, running her fingers down the list of ingredients.
Lacewing		"You read too much, Hermione," said Ron, pouring dead lacewings on top of the leeches. He crumpled up the empty lacewing bag and looked round at Harry.
Wasp		Twenty cauldrons stood steaming between the wooden desks, on which stood brass scales and jars of ingredients. Snape prowled through the fumes, making waspish remarks about the Gryffindors' work while the Slytherins sniggered appreciatively.
Spider		Harry got to his feet, his breathing fast and shallow, his heart doing a kind of drum-roll against his ribs. He looked wildly up and down the deserted corridor and saw a line of spiders scuttling as fast as they could away from the bodies.
Bee		Harry stared at the black inside of the Hat, waiting. then a small voice said in his ear, "Bee in your bonnet, Harry Potter?" "Er, yes," Harry muttered...
Lacewing		" Merry Christmas to you, too," said Hermione, throwing him his present. "I've been up for nearly an hour, adding more lacewings to the potion. It's ready."
Spider		Fudge, fiddling with his bowler, waited for Hagrid to go ahead of him, but Hagrid stood his ground, took a deep breath and said carefully, "If anyone wanted ter find out some stuff, all they'd have ter do would be ter follow the spiders. That'd lead 'em right! That's all I'm sayin'." ... "An' someone'll need ter feed Fang while I'm away."
Spider		Hagrid's hint about the spiders was far easier to understand - the trouble was, there didn't seem to be a single spider left in the castle to follow.
Spider		A second later, Harry spotted something that made him hit Ron over the hand with his pruning shears. "Ouch! What're you -" Harry was pointing at the ground a few feet away. Several large spiders were scurrying across the earth. ... Harry watched the spiders running away. "Looks like they're heading for the Forbidden Forest..."
Spider		"Course," said Ron abruptly, as they strode across the black grass, "we might get to the Forest and find there's nothing to follow. Thos spiders might not've been going there at all."
Spider		Harry took out his wand, murmured, "Lumos!" and a tiny light appeared at the end of it, just enough to let them watch the path for signs of spiders.
Spider		Harry tapped Ron on the shoulder, pointing at the grass. Two solitary spiders were hurrying away from the wandlight into the shade of the trees.
Spider		By the glow of Harry's wand, they followed the steady trickle of spiders moving along the path. ... Then, when the trees had become thicker than ever, so that the stars overhead were no longer visible, and Harry's wand shone alone in the sea of dark, they saw their spider guides leaving the path. Harry paused, trying to see where the spiders where going, but everything outside his little sphere of light was pitch black.
Spider		But Hagrid was miles away now, probably sitting in a cell in Azkaban, and he had also said to follow the spiders. ... So they followed the darting shadows of the spiders into the trees. ... More than once, they had to stop, so that Harry could crouch down and find the spiders in the wandlight.
Spider		Harry squinted around on the floodlit ground for signs of more spiders, but they had all scuttled away from the glare of the headlights.
Spider		He never knew how long he was in the creature's clutches; he only new that the darkness suddenly lifted enough for him to see that the leaf-strewn ground was now swarming with spiders. ... Spiders. Not tiny spiders like those surging over the leaves below. Spiders the size of carthorses, eight-eyed, eight-legged, black, hairy, gigantic.
Spider		Harry fell to the ground on all fours as the spider released him. ... Harry suddenly realised that the spider which had dropped him was saying something. It had been hard to tell, because he clicked his pincers with every word he spoke. "Aragog!" it called. "Aragog!" And from the middle of the misty domed web, a spider the size of a small elephant emerged, very slowly. ... "What is it?" he said, clicking his pincers rapidly. "Men," clicked the spider who had caught Harry. "Is it Hagrid?" said aragog, moving closer, his eight milky eyes wandering vaguely. "Strangers," clicked the spider who had brought Ron. "Kill them, " clicked Aragog fretfully. "Iwas sleeping ..." ... Click, click, click went the pincers of the spiders all around the hollow.
Spider		"Hagrid's in trouble," said Harry, breathing very fast. "That's why we've come." "In trouble?" said the aged spider, and Harry thought he heard concern beneath the clicking pincers.
Spider		Aragog clicked his pincers furiously, and all around the hollow the sound was echoed by the crowd of spiders; it was like applause, except applause didn't usually make Harry feel sick with fear.
Spider		Harry summoned what remained of his courage. "So you never - never attacked anyone?" "Never," croaked the old spider. "It would have been my instinct, but from respect of Hagrid, i never harmed a human...."
Spider		"The thing that lives in the castle," said Aragog, "is an ancient creature we spiders fear above all others. ..."
Spider		More loud clicking, more rustling; the spiders seemed to be closing in.
Spider		Harry didn't want to press the subject, not with the spiders pressing closer on all sides. Aragog seemed to be tired of talking. he was backing slowly into his domed web, but his fellow spiders continued to inch slowly towards Harry and Ron.
Spider		Harry spun around. Feet away, towering above him, was a solid wall of spiders, clicking, their many eyes gleaming in their ugly black heads ...
Spider		Mr. Weasley's car was thundering down the slope, headlamps glaring, its horn screeching. knocking spiders aside; several were thrown on their backs, their endless legs waving in the air.
Spider		"Follow the spiders," said Ron, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "I'll never forgive Hagrid. We're lucky to be alive."
Spider		... the Baselisk has a murderous stare, and all who are fixed with the beam of its eye shall suffer instant death. Spiders flee before the Baselisk, for it is their mortal enemy, and the Baselisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster, which is fatal to it.
Spider		"... Spiders flee before it! It all fits!"
Dumbledore		"... It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

3 - Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban

Spider

Hagrid had been known to befriend giant spiders, buy vicious, three-headed dogs from men in pubs and sneak illegal dragon eggs into his cabin.

4 ..

... more quotes when I have reread the other books

5 ...

6 ...

7 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Beetle		... leaving a layer of general debris at the bottom - old quills, desiccated beetle eyes, single socks that no longer fitted.
Spider		Harry looked around at the stacked shoes and umbrellas, remembering how he used to wake up every morning looking up at the underside of the staircase, which was more often than not adorned with a spider or two.
Midge		'That's her,' he said, pointing at Luna, who was still dancing alone, waving her arms around her head like someone attempting to beat off midges.
Moth		As evening drew in and moths began to swoop under the canopy, now lit with floating golden lanterns, the revelry became more and more uncontained.
Moth		His cloud of white hair made him look rather like an aged dandelion clock, and was topped by a moth-eaten fez.
Spider		A fine film of dust covered the pictures on the walls and the bed's headboard: a spider's web stretched between the chandelier and the top of the the large wooden wardrobe and as Harry moved deeper into the room, he heard a scurrying of disturbed mice.
Spider		'What's up? If it's massive spiders again, I want breakfast before I -"
Spider		'... But you don't give a rat's fart, do you, it's only the Forbidden Forest, Harry I've-Face-Worse Potter doesn't care what happens to her in here, well, I do, all right, giant spiders and mental stuff -'
Moth		The odour of old age, of dust, of unwashed clothes and stale food intensified as she unwound a moth-eaten, black shawl, revealing a head of scant white hair through which the scalp showed clearly.
Spider		The night wet and windy, two children dressed as pumpkins waddling across the square, and the shop windows covered in paper spiders, all the tawdry Muggle trappings of a world in which they did not believe ...
Insect		His voice cracked with the strain, and they stood looking at each other in the whiteness and the emptiness, and Harry felt they were insignificant as insects beneath the wide sky.
Spider		A large spider sat in the middle of a frosted web in the brambles.
Spider		'Engorgio.' The spider gave a little shiver, bouncing slightly in the web. Harry tried again. This time the spider grew slightly larger. ... Harry had forgotten Ron's hatred of spiders. 'Sorry - reducio.' The spider did not shrink.
Insect		Everything was curved to fit the walls: the stove, the sink and the cupboards, and all of it had been painted with flowers, insects and birds in bright primary colours.
Hermione		"... you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody's proved it doesn't exist!'
Dragonfly		He set it down and returned to the hall, and as he did so, he felt his scar pulse angrily, and there flashed across his mind, swift as the reflection of a dragonfly over water, the outline of a building he knew extremely well.
Spider		The spider-like hand swooped and pulled the wand from Dumbledore's grasp, and as he took it, a shower of sparks flew from its tip, sparkling over the corpse of its last owner, ready to serve a new master at last.
Spider		The firelight made the grimy lenses of Aberforth's glasses momentarily opaque, a bright, flat white, and Harry remembered the blind eyes of the giant spider, Aragog.
Spider		A monstrous spider the size of a small car was trying to climb through the huge hole in the wall: one of Aragog's descendants had joined the fight. ... 'It brought friends!' Harry called to the others, ... more giant spiders were climbing the side of the building, liberated from the Forbidden Forest into which the Death Eaters must have penetrated.
Spider		At the same moment, the heavy wooden front doors burst open, and more of the gigantic spiders forced their way into the Entrance Hall.
Spider		But he was not halfway to Hagrid when he saw it happen: Hagrid vanished amongst the spiders, and with great scurrying, a foul swarming movement, they retreated under the onslaught of spells, Hagrid buried in their midst. 'HAGRID!' Harry heard someone calling his own name, whether friend or foe he did not care: he was sprinting down the front steps into the dark grounds, and the spiders were swarming away with their prey, and he could see nothing of Harry at all. 'HAGRID!' He thought he could make out an enormous arm waving from the midst of the spider swarm, but as he made to chase after them, his way was impeded by a monumental foot, ...
Fly		With a tiny jerk of the head, Snape seemed to flick off an irksome fly.
Dumbledore		" ... perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it."
Dumbledore		" ... there are far, far worse things in the living world than dying."
Dumbledore		"Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and above all, those who live without love."
Cockroach		'Love, which did not prevent me stamping out your Mudblood mother like a cockroach, Potter - and nobody seems to love you enough to run forwards this time, and take my curse.'

All the above quotes from Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling.