Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
History
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Essays, First Series
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
“Deep in their roots all flowers keep the light.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) American poet
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate
"Flower in the Crannied Wall" (1869)
Context: Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower — but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
“Not now. Love itself a flower
with roots in a parched ground.”
William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet
"Raleigh Was Right" (1940)
Collected Later Poems (1950)
Context: Not now. Love itself a flower
with roots in a parched ground.
Empty pockets make empty heads.
Cure it if you can but
do not believe that we can live
today in the country
for the country will bring us
no peace.
“A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.”
Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …
This seems to have been first attributed to Franklin in The New Age Magazine Vol. 66 (1958), and the earliest appearance of it yet located is in Coronet magazine, Vol. 34 (1953), p. 27, where it was attributed to a Louise Stein; it thus seems likely to have been derived from an earlier statement of Harry Emerson Fosdick, On Being a Real Person (1943) : "At very best, a person wrapped up in himself makes a small package".
Misattributed
“I am nothing but a bundle of nerves dressed up to look like a man.”
Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White
Volume II [Tauchnitz,
Source: The Woman in White (1859)
“A thing which fades
With no outward sign—
Is the flower
Of the heart of man
In this world!”
Ono no Komachi (825–900) Japanese poet
trans. Arthur Waley, p. 78
Donald Keene's Anthology of Japanese Literature (1955)
William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet
A Poet!—He Hath Put His Heart to School, l. 9 (1842).
“To me, our destinies seem flower and fruit
Born of an ever-generating root…”
Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist
Life Without and Life Within (1859), The One In All
“Are not all loves secretly the same? A hundred flowers sprung from a single root.”
Tanith Lee book Delirium's Mistress
Source: Delirium's Mistress