“Call us not weeds, we are flowers of the Sea,
For lovely and bright and gay tinted are we,
And quite independent of sun's fire or showers-
Then call us not weeds! We are ocean's bright flowers,
Not nursed like the plants of a summer parterre,
Where gales are but sighs of an evening air,
Our exquisite, fragile and delicate forms
Are nursed by the Ocean and rocked by the Storms.”

“There is a flower, a purple flower
Sown by the wind, nursed by the shower,
O'er which Love has breathed a power and spell
The truth of whispering hope to tell.”

“There is a flower, a purple flower
Sown by the wind, nursed by the shower,
O'er which Love has breathed a power and spell
The truth of whispering hope to tell.
(According to the Lady’s Book of Flowers, 1842, this is the centaury)”

“We might well call this short Mock-play of ours
A Posie made of Weeds instead of Flowers;
Yet such have been presented to your noses,
And there are such, I fear, who thought 'em Roses.”

“A weed is but an unloved flower.”

“What is needed is scientific analysis and convincing argument. Dogmatic criticism settles nothing. We are against poisonous weeds of all kinds, but we must carefully distinguish between what is really a poisonous weed and what is really a fragrant flower. Together with the masses of the people, we must learn to differentiate carefully between the two and to use correct methods to fight the poisonous weeds.”

“O grant me a house by the beach of a bay,
Where the waves can be surly in winter, and play
With the sea-weed in summer, ye bountiful powers!
And I'd leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray,
For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.”

“A weed is just a flower growing in the wrong place”

“I know I cannot paint a flower. I can not paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning but maybe in terms of paint color I can convey to you my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower of significance to me at that particular time.”

“Now the leaves are falling fast,
Nurse's flowers will not last;
Nurses to their graves are gone,
And the prams go rolling on.”