“Love and death are gritty subjects. Their appropriate handling by poets does not require myrtle petals and violets.”

“In rose with petals soft as air
I bind for you the tides and fire —
the death that lives within the flower,
oh, gladly love, for you I bear.”

Kathleen Raine (1908–2003) poet, critic, translator

“Her mouth is a honey-blossom,
No doubt, as the poet sings;
But within her lips, the petals,
Lurks a cruel bee that stings.”

William Dean Howells (1837–1920) author, critic and playwright from the United States

“love make us poets, and the approach of death should make us philosophers.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

“They built a temple for the God,
'Twas in a myrtle grove,
Where the bee and the butterfly
Vied for each blossom's love.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

“The early graced of Grecian song,
The fragrant myrtle tree;
For it doth speak of happy love,
The delicate, the true.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

“The cemetery is an open space among the ruins covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

“Staying in control daily, weekly, & yearly requires different things for each. Handling one doesn't handle the others.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

“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

“The rose petal floats on water. The kingfisher flashes above the pond. Life and beauty swirl in the midst of death.”

Robert Jordan book The Eye of the World