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

“208. The honey is sweet, but the bee stings.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

“Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes,
Soft as her clime, and sunny as her skies.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

“Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

“Crimson clover I discover
By the garden gate,
And the bees about her hover,
But the robins wait.
Sing, robins, sing,
Sing a roundelay,—
'Tis the latest flower of Spring
Coming with the May!”

Dora Read Goodale (1866–1953) U.S. poet

“So a lioness that has newly whelped, beset by Numidian hunters in her cruel den, stands upright over her young, gnashing her teeth in grim and piteous wise, her mind in doubt; she could disrupt the groups and break their weapons with her bite, but love for her offspring binds her cruel heart and from the midst of her fury she looks round at her cubs.”
Ut lea, quam saeuo fetam pressere cubili venantes Numidae, natos erecta superstat, mente sub incerta torvum ac miserabile frendens; illa quidem turbare globos et frangere morsu tela queat, sed prolis amor crudelia vincit pectora, et a media catulos circumspicit ira.

Statius book Thebaid

“It's a GIRL.
It's a little girl, with scrunched-up petal lips and a tuft of dark hair and hands in tiny fits, up by her ears. All that time, that's who was in there. And it's weird, but the minute I saw her I just thought: IT'S YOU. Of course it is.”

Sophie Kinsella (1969) British writer

“The flower doesn’t dream of the bee. It blossoms and the bee comes.”

Mark Nepo (1951) American writer

“When Manmatha kissed Rati, blood from her lips may have spit on earth and blossomed into rose on the plant and kisses the viewer's eyes with its beauty now!”

Kuvempu (1904–1994) Kannada novelist, poet, playwright, critic, and thinker

“You are so beautiful, he mouthed. But of course she couldn’t see his lips. Guess he was going to have to show her.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist