“The flowers flashed before they faded. She watched them flash.”
Virginia Woolf book Between the Acts
Between the Acts (1941)
This phrase was used as the title of a work published in 1931, but was originally used in Ch. LXII of A Novel of Thank You, written in 1925-1926, but not published until 1958 by the Yale University Press
“The flowers flashed before they faded. She watched them flash.”
Virginia Woolf book Between the Acts
Between the Acts (1941)
“A flower may fade before 'tis noon,
And I this day may lose my breath.”
Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician
Song 13: "The Danger of Delay".
1710s, Divine Songs Attempted in the Easy Language of Children (1715)
“As every flower fades and as all youth”
Hermann Hesse book The Glass Bead Game
The Glass Bead Game (1943)
“Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher
"Youth and Age", st. 2 (1823–1832).
Context: Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree;
Oh the joys that came down shower-like,
Of friendship, love, and liberty,
Ere I was old!
“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)
“The flowers anew returning seasons bring!
But beauty faded has no second spring.”
Ambrose Philips (1674–1749) Anglo-Irish poet and politician
Lobbing, The First Pastoral (1709), line 55.
“Love is flower like; Friendship is like a sheltering tree.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher
“O fairest flower! no sooner blown but blasted,
Soft silken primrose fading timelessly.”
John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet
Ode on the Death of a fair Infant, dying of a Cough, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots
to make earth.”
Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet
"Shine, Perishing Republic" (1939)