“Love not the flower they pluck and know it not,
And all their botany is Latin names.”

—  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Blight
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

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Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson 727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882

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Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“But these young scholars who invade our hills,
Bold as the engineer who fells the wood,
And travelling often in the cut he makes,
Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not,
And all their botany is Latin names.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Blight http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/blight.htm, st. 2
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John Clare photo

“O how I feel, just as I pluck the flower
And stick it to my breast — words can't reveal;
But there are souls that in this lovely hour
Know all I mean, and feel whate'er I feel.”

John Clare (1793–1864) English poet

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Honoré de Balzac photo

“A young bride is like a plucked flower; but a guilty wife is like a flower that had been walked over.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Une jeune fille est comme une fleur qu'on a cueillie; mais la femme coupable est une fleur sur laquelle on a marché.
Honorine http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Honorine (1845), translated by Clara Bell

Pablo Neruda photo

“Our love was born
outside the walls,
in the wind,
in the night,
in the earth,
and that's why the clay and the flower,
the mud and the roots
know your name.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet
Suman Pokhrel photo

“Even if they (Children) try to pluck it,
the flower submits itself onto their hands.
If it happens to prick their heels,
the thorn scorns itself all its life.”

Suman Pokhrel (1967) Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist

<span class="plainlinks"> Children http://www.occupypoetry.net/children_1/</span>
From Poetry

“I knew a poet who was totally ignorant about botany. And I said: you can't be a poet without knowing any botany or plants and things like that; it's impossible, that's the first thing you should know.”

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) American painter

Source: 2000 - 2011, Cy Twombly, 2000', by David Sylvester (June 2000), p. 173

Richard Lovelace photo

“Love, then unstinted, Love did sip,
And cherries plucked fresh from the lip;
On cheeks and roses free he fed;
Lasses like autumn plums did drop,
And lads indifferently did crop
A flower and a maidenhead.”

Richard Lovelace (1617–1658) English writer and poet

Love Made in the First Age: To Chloris (l. 13–18).

Abraham Lincoln photo

“I want it said of me by those who knew me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Recalled in a letter from Joshua Speed in Herndon's Lincoln (1890), p. 527 http://books.google.com/books?id=rywOAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA527&dq=%22plucked+a+thistle+and+planted+a+flower%22
Posthumous attributions

Jan Smuts photo

“Myself, when young, loved nature rather than sport, and took to Botany as a hobby. Gradually I began to realise that the Family of Grasses was the most important of all, and did my best to become acquainted with that perhaps most difficult of all plant families. … it is one of the largest of all families in botany, and the flowers are mostly very small and insignificant, and often call for the use of lenses to distinguish them properly. No wonder that other easier, more gaudy and attractive families are preferred by botanical beginners. But once you take a little trouble … their attraction and their glory grow on you, until at last you surrender completely to their charm.”

Jan Smuts (1870–1950) military leader, politician and statesman from South Africa

Foreword (dated 15 May 1950) to The Grasses & Pastures of South Africa, D. Meredith (ed.), 1954

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