“I do love violets:
They tell the history of woman's love;
They open with the earliest breath of spring;
Lead a sweet life of perfume, dew, and light;
And, if they perish, perish with a sigh
Delicious as that life.”

“O love! O love!
Be with us always
We who will perish salute death
Life alone goes on!”
O caritas, O caritas nobis semper sit amor mos perituri mortem salutamus — ah, ah sola resurgit vita

“O nature, nature, life will not perish! Friends, Helena, life will not perish! It will begin anew with love; it will start out naked and tiny; it will take root in the wilderness, and to it all that we did and built will mean nothing — our towns and factories, our art, our ideas will all mean nothing, and yet life will not perish! Only we have perished. Our houses and machines will be in ruins, our systems will collapse, and the names of our great will fall away like dry leaves. Only you, love, will blossom on this rubbish heap and commit the seed of life to the winds. Now let Thy servant depart in peace, O Lord, for my eyes have beheld — beheld Thy deliverance through love, and life shall not perish!”

“Violets! — deep-blue violets!
April's loveliest coronets!
There are no flowers grow in the vale,
Kiss'd by the dew, wooed by the gale, —
None by the dew of the twilight wet,
So sweet as the deep-blue violet!”

“Love each other or perish.”

“It may seem fanciful, but to me the violet is the very emblem of woman's love; it springs up in secret; it hides its perfume even when gathered; how timidly its deep blue leaves bend on their slight stem! The resemblance may be carried yet further — woman's love is but beautiful in its purity; let the hot breath of passion once sully it, and its beauty is departed — thus as the summer advances, the violet loses its fragrance; June comes, but its odours are fled — the heart too has its June; the flower may remain, but its fragrance is gone for ever.”

“Love is the whole history of a woman's life; it is an episode in a man's.”

“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.”

“I love him who seeks to create over and beyond himself and thus perishes.”

“Love, passionate young Love, how sweet it is
To have the bosom made a Paradise
By thee—life lighted by thy rainbow smile!”