Quotes about flowers
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“Why do people give each other flowers? To celebrate various important occasions, they’re killing living creatures? Why restrict it to plants? 'Sweetheart, let’s make up. Have this deceased squirrel.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

People

“Believe that the world is an ethereal flower, and ye live.”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums

World

“Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Lie, Books

“My lovely shining fragile broken house is filled with flowers and founded on a rock.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Love, Housing

“I don't know these people and they aren't my flowers.”

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer

People

“These flowers will be rotten in a couple hours. Birds will crap on them. The smoke here will make them stink, and tomorrow a bulldozer will probably run over them, but for right now they are so beautiful.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

Beauty, Bird

“The fact that I can plant a seed and it becomes a flower, share a bit of knowledge and it becomes another's, smile at someone and receive a smile in return, are to me continual spiritual exercises.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Smile, Exercises, Knowledge

“He didn’t give me flowers or candy. He gave me the moon and the stars. Infinity

-Belly Conklin”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Star

“I dreamed you were standing in this dark place and you touched these dead flowers and they lit up like they were electric or something. Electric lilies. Lighting up the Valley.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Source: Girl Goddess #9: Nine Stories

Dreams, Light, Dead

“What is so marvelous about living today is that it is possible to extend, like a flower, spreading petals in all directions.”

Carolyn Kizer (1925–2014) American poet

“How I long to see
among dawn flowers,
the face of God.”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

Source: Haiku

God

“Oh, come with old Khayyám, and leave the Wise
To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;
One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;
The Flower that once blown for ever dies.”

Edward FitzGerald (1809–1883) English poet and writer

Source: Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Life

“I don't want to be stinky poo-poo girl, I want to be happy flower child.”

Drew Barrymore (1975) American actress, director and producer

Girl, Happiness

“Raindrops blossom brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod, but snow comes in full flower direct from the dark, frozen sky.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Source: The Mountains of California

Change

“Nothing is ever finished and done with in this world. You may think a seed was finished and done with when it falls like a dead thing into the earth; but when it puts forth leaves and flowers next spring you see your mistake.”

Elizabeth Goudge book The Little White Horse

Source: The Little White Horse

World, Spring, Thinking, Dead

“The flowers were so beautiful, so delicate and unthreatening, but they choked everything around them.”

Scott Westerfeld book Uglies

Source: Uglies

Beauty

“It is better to be small, colorful, sexy, careless, and peaceful, like the flowers, than large, conservative, repressed, fearful, and aggressive, like the thunder lizards; a lesson, by the way, that the Earth has yet to learn.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume

Fear, Peace, Color, Way

“I never see that prettiest thing-
A cherry bough gone white with Spring-
But what I think, "How gay 'twould be
To hang me from a flowering tree.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: Not So Deep As A Well: Collected Poems

Spring, Thinking, Tree

“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

Love, Night

“Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

“I think that real friendship always makes us feel such sweet gratitude, because the world almost always seems like a very hard desert, and the flowers that grow there seem to grow against such high odds.”

Stephen King book The Eyes of the Dragon

Source: The Eyes of the Dragon

Friendship, World, Feeling, Thinking

“Don't wait until people are dead to give them flowers.”

Sean Covey (1964) author; business executive

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens: The Ultimate Teenage Success Guide

People, Waiting, Dead

“She was a dark, unenduring little flower - yet he thought he detected in her some quality of spiritual reticence, of strength drawn from her passive acceptance of all things. In this he was mistaken.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

“Because horror on Earth is real and it is every day. It is like a flower or like the sun; it cannot be contained.”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

Sun

“There are in this world blessed souls, whose sorrows all spring up into joys for others; whose earthly hopes, laid in the grave with many tears, are the seed from which spring healing flowers and balm for the desolate and the distressed.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin

Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin

World, Hope, Soul, Spring

“How right it is to love flowers and the greenery of pines and ivy and hawthorn hedges; they have been with us from the very beginning.”

Vincent Van Gogh book The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Source: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Love

“And the Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Source: The Complete Poems

Love, Dreams, Spring

“Max Rose: Vo? What kind of name is that?
Spader: What kind of name is Rose? Isn't that some kind of flower?”

D.J. MacHale (1955) American television director and producer

“You're always begging things to love you," he said, "as if you were a beggar for love. Even the flowers, you have to fawn on them--”

D.H. Lawrence book Sons and Lovers

Source: Sons and Lovers

Love

“I can alter my life by altering my attitude. He who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Life

“I hated roses. I hated them for being so trite, so clichéd, a default, all-purpose flower that said I love you, I'm sorry, and get well soon. Give me peonies and tulips, orchids or gardenia. Those were flowers with character.”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Source: North of Beautiful

Love, Hate

“My innocence is a dying flower”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

“Oh, London is a man’s town, there’s power in the air;
And Paris is a woman’s town, with flowers in her hair;
And it’s sweet to dream in Venice, and it’s great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living, there is no place like home.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Variant: Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air;
And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair;
And it's sweet to dream in Venice, and it's great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living there is no place like home.
Source: America for Me (1909), Lines 9-12.

Dreams, Home, Study

“We didn’t know what was ahead of us then. We were just two teenagers, looking up at the sky on a cold February night. So no, he didn’t give me flowers or candy. He gave me the moon and the stars. Infinity.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Variant: We were just two teenagers, looking up at the sky on a cold February night. So no, he didn’t give me flowers or candy. He gave me the moon and the stars. Infinity.
Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Star, Night

“I had the brief notion that his heart, pressed flat as a flower, crimson and thin as tissue paper, lay in this file. It was a very thin one.”

Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist

Source: The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

Heart

“Bee, why are you staring at me? I am not a flower??”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Bee

“Bullshit makes the flowers grow and that is beautiful”

Gregory Hill (1941–2000) American writer and founder of Discordianism

Source: Principia Discordia ● Or ● How I Found Goddess and What I Did to Her When I Found Her: The Magnum Opiate of Malaclypse the Younger

Beauty

“Each day the storm clouds were opening like great purple flowers and pouring out their dark thunder. Each nightfall, the storm was laid down on their houses like a burden the day had carried.”

Eudora Welty (1909–2001) American author

Source: The Wide Net and Other Stories

Housing

“Happiness was like a green vine spreading through her, stretching fine tendrils, bearing flowers through her flesh.”

Patricia Highsmith book The Price of Salt

Source: The Price of Salt

Happiness

“You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin, or even vagueness - ignorance, credulity - helps your enjoyment of these things.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Bird, Tree, Help

“The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace. With each step, the wind blows. With each step, a flower blooms.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Beauty, Peace, Beauty

“I'll cover you in flowers someday, Julie-girl.”

Lurlene McDaniel (1944) American writer

Source: Don't Die, My Love

Girl

“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting—a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.”

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

Though attributed to Emerson in Edwards' A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908), p. 37, this quote originates in Politics for the People (1848) by Charles Kingsley.
Misattributed

God, Beauty

“She was no longer a slow dreamer watching the flowers grow. She was a warrior now. Warriors need something to fight for though, beside their lives, because otherwise their lives will not be worth it.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Source: The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold

Fight

“In you is the illusion of each day.
You arrive like the dew to the cupped flowers.
You undermine the horizon with your absence.
Eternally in flight like the wave.”

Pablo Neruda book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Source: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

“Come, see the true
flowers
of this pained world.”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

Source: On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho

Pain, World

“She wore flowers in her hair and carried magic secrets in her eyes. She spoke to no one. She spent hours on the riverbank. She smoked cigarettes and had midnight swims…”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

Secret

“Beauty doesn't have to beanything. What's a vase about? What's a sunset or a flower about? What, for that matter, is Mozart's Twenty-third Piano Concerto?”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

Source: The Salmon of Doubt

Beauty

“The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

love, Heart Touching, For Her, Love

“I like flowers, I also like children, but I do not chop their heads off and keep them in bowls of water around the house.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Children, Water, Housing

“I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the colour and fragrance of a flower - the Light in my darkness, the Voice in my silence.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

God, Light, Silence, Sun

“The woman wears a floral print blouse with lots of leaves and pink flowers. Risa would like to attack her with a weed whacker.”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Source: Unwind

“When one flower blooms spring awakens everywhere”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Spring

“A bud is a flower-to-be. A flower in waiting. Waiting for just the right warmth and care to open up. It's a little fist of love waiting to unfold and be seen by the world. And that's you.”

Christopher Paul Curtis book Bud, Not Buddy

Source: Bud, Not Buddy

Love, World, Waiting

“I think the sun is a flower,
That blooms for just one hour.”

Ray Bradbury book All Summer in a Day

Source: All Summer in a Day

Thinking, Sun

“May our heart's garden of awakening bloom with hundreds of flowers.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Heart

“Each time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain. It was that day that I knew I wanted to tell the story of my family. Because horror on Earth is real and it is every day. It is like a flower or like the sun; it cannot be contained.”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

Pain, Family, Time, Sun

“The extreme clarity of the desert light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life forms. Love flowers best in openness and freedom.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

Source: Desert Solitaire

Love, Life, Freedom, Light

“Flowers that grow where old ones have withered serve to remind us that death will one day come to us all.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Death

“I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me I'm not fit to sell anything else.”

George Bernard Shaw Pygmalion

Source: Pygmalion

“Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word - musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase. Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself:. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor.”

Margaret Atwood book Alias Grace

Source: Alias Grace

Strong, Night, Dead

“Flowers are made to bloom in the sun and not to be shut up in an apron.”

Johanna Spyri book Heidi

Source: Heidi

Sun

“And when thou art weary I'll find thee a bed,
Of mosses and flowers to pillow thy head.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Source: The Complete Poems

Art

“In the Kamigata area, they have a sort of tiered lunchbox they use for a single day when flower viewing. Upon returning, they throw them away, trampling them underfoot. The end is important in all things.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Source: Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

“Let us dance in the sun, wearing wild flowers in our hair…”

Susan Polis Schutz (1944) American poet

Sun, Dance

“Magnus shrugged. "He also made inappropriate amorous advances to a startled grandmotherly sort selling flowers, an Irish wolfhound, and innocent hat stand in a dwelling he broke into, and myself.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Midnight Heir

“I once had a garden filled with flowers that grew only on dark thoughts but they need constant attention & one day I decided I had better things to do.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in--what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Dreams, Star

“I've waited a long time to show these flowers how pretty you are.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Time, Waiting

“Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine

Bee

“I had only to open my bedroom window, and blue air, love, and flowers entered with her”.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

Love

“But where I itty now, O my brothers, is all on my oddy knocky, where you cannot go. Tomorrow is all like sweet flowers and the turning vonny earth and the stars and the old Luna up there and your old droog Alex all on his oddy knocky seeking like a mate. And all that cal. A terrible grahzny vonny world, really, O my brothers. And so farewell from your little droog. And to all others in this story profound shooms of lip music brrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries. But you, O my brothers, remember sometimes thy little Alex that was. Amen. And all that cal.”

Anthony Burgess book A Clockwork Orange

Source: Fiction, A Clockwork Orange (1962)

World, Music, Star, Kiss

“I merely feel emptyness. A hollow of dead brush where flowers use to bloom.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Feeling, Dead

“(M)aybe we too busy being flowers or fairies or strawberries instead of something honest and worthy of respect… you know… like being people.”

Toni Cade Bambara (1939–1995) author, activist, professor

Source: Raymond's Run

People, Business

“So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Soul, Waiting

“And the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers
Is always the first to be touch'd by the thorns.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Oh think not my Spirits are always as light.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Heart

“God will bless you,' said he, 'you are an angel since you take care of the flowers.'
'No,' she replied. 'I am the devil, but that's all the same to me.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Miserables

God, Angels

“Deep in their roots all flowers keep the light.”

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) American poet

Deep, Beauty, Peaceful, Light

“I stood still, vision blurring, and in that moment, I heard my heart break. It was a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a flower's stem.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Romantic, Heart

“Life and love are life and love, a bunch of violets is a bunch of violets, and to drag in the idea of a point is to ruin everything. Live and let live, love and let love, flower and fade, and follow the natural curve, which flows on, pointless.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Love, Life, Idea, Nature

“Yes. I killed him. And buried her in flowers," I say. "And I sang her to sleep.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Sleep

“Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

Life, Despair

“Jo had learned that hearts, like flowers, cannot be rudely handled, but must open naturally…”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Nature, Learning, Heart

“The sky, at sunset, looked like a carnivorous flower.”

Roberto Bolaño book 2666

Source: 2666

“I've mastered many things in my life. Navigating the strets of London, dancing the quadrille, the Japanese art of flower arranging, lying at charades, concealing a highly intoxicated state, delighting young women with my charms…”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Life, Women, Art, Lying

“If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for a moment.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

World

“I should like to freeze in time all those I do love… Rather like flowers pressed between the pages of a book!”

Sharon Kay Penman (1945) American historical novelist

Love, Books, Time

“My mother says that pain is hidden in everyone you see. She says try to imagine it like big bunches of flowers that everyone is carrying around with them. Think of your pain like a big bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one.”

Francesca Lia Block book Witch Baby

Source: Witch Baby

Pain, Beauty, Imagination, Thinking

“The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Source: Pygmalion & My Fair Lady

Girl

“I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.”

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic

Men, Dreams, Tear, Laughter

“I go to books and to nature as the bee goes to a flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Source: The Summit of the Years

Books, Nature, Bee

“The park grass looked greener, the park benches looked better and the flowers were trying harder.”

Charles Bukowski book Ham on Rye

Source: Ham on Rye

Grass

“I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Sun

“It's as if the world is full of honeybees and I'm the only flower" -Elena”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Shadow Souls

World

“He might as well plant an oak in a flower-pot, and expect it to thrive, as imagine he can restore her to vigour in the soil of his shallow cares!”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff (Ch. XIV).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: You talk of her mind being unsettled - how the devil could it be otherwise, in her frightful isolation? And that insipid, paltry creature attending her from duty and humanity! From pity and charity. He might as well plant an oak in a flower-pot, and expect it to thrive, as imagine he can restore her to vigour in the soil of his shallow cares!

Imagination

“I see now that when Norma flowered in our garden I became a weed, allowed to exist only where I would not be seen, in corners and dark places.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Source: Flowers for Algernon