“I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love; I never wish to receive them from hands dear to me.”

— Charlotte Brontë , book Villette

Source: Villette (1853), Ch. XXIX: Monsieur's Fête

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Charlotte Brontë 83

English novelist and poet 1816–1855

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