
“No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose.”
Nelly Dean (Ch. X).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: She seemed almost over fond of Mr. Linton; and even to his sister she showed plenty of affection. They were both very attentive to her comfort, certainly. It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn.
“No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose.”
"The Rose" (published c. 1648). Compare: "Flower of all hue, and without thorn the rose", John Milton, Paradise Lost, book iv. line 256.; "Every rose has it's thorn", Poison, "Every Rose Has Its Thorn".
Hesperides (1648)
Smith, The Oxford History of India, 462. Quoted from Spencer, Robert (2018). The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS.
“A stranger's rose is but a thorn.”
In Alien Lands, translated by Leah W. Leonard.
Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 780
“The art road is paved with thorns.”
June 10, 2009; alkhaleej.ae http://www.alkhaleej.ae/supplements/page/9522cefb-de34-4270-a674-ae2dd76da0ad
2009
“The kingliest kings are crowned with thorn.”
The kingliest Kings, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Section 7 : Spiritual Progress
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: 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.