“He who wants a rose must respect her thorn.”

“If man's heart bares thistles instead of rose who will dare to admire? Before roses cometh thorns, but people only see the thorns not the roses I bare.”

“No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose.”

“Though the way of religion has thorns in it with respect to persecution, yet it is full of roses with respect to that inward peace and contentment that the soul finds in it.”

“Romantic: one who professes to prefer the thorns to the rose.”

“But he, that dares not grasp the thorn
Should never crave the rose.”

“Before man's fall the rose was born,
St. Ambrose says, without the thorn;
But for man's fault then was the thorn
Without the fragrant rose-bud born; But ne'er the rose without the thorn.”

“A stranger's rose is but a thorn.”

“Let him only see the thorns who has eyes to see the rose.”

“By what sort of experience are we led to the conviction that spirit exists ? On the whole, by searching, painful experience. The rose Religion grows on a thorn-bush, and we must not be afraid to have our fingers lacerated by the thorns if we would pluck the rose.”