“Let your children be as so many flowers, borrowed from God. If the flowers die or wither, thank God for a summer loan of them.”

—  Samuel Rutherford

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 51.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Let your children be as so many flowers, borrowed from God. If the flowers die or wither, thank God for a summer loan o…" by Samuel Rutherford?
Samuel Rutherford photo
Samuel Rutherford36
Scottish Reformed theologian 1600–1661

Related quotes

Dwight D. Eisenhower photo

“Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Frida Kahlo photo

“I paint flowers so they will not die.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Ono no Komachi photo

“Imperceptible
It withers in the world,
This flower-like human heart.”

Ono no Komachi (825–900) Japanese poet

Source: Kenneth Rexroth's translations, One Hundred Poems from the Japanese (1955), p. 46

Nakayama Miki photo

“That is it. Did you notice those pumpkins and eggplants? They are big, aren’t they? The plants bear fruit because the flowers bloom. Not a single plant bears fruit without its flower. Now ponder deeply. The world says woman is unclean, but there is nothing unclean about woman. Man and woman are equally children of God and there is no discrimination. Woman has a duty, a duty to bear children. Her monthly period is the flower. Without the flower there is no fruit. Understand this well. Take the pumpkin; if its big flower is gone, that is the end of it. In many things, there are flowers that bear no fruit. But to bear fruit without any flower is impossible. Ponder deeply. There is nothing unclean about it.”

Nakayama Miki (1798–1887) Founder of Tenrikyo

Anecdotes of Oyasama, Foundress of Tenrikyo, from Anecdote 158, "Monthly Period is the Flower," p. 128.
Anecdotes of Oyasama

Francis Turner Palgrave photo

“Let the children play
And sit like flowers upon thy grave
And crown with flowers,—that hardly have
A briefer blooming-tide than they.”

Francis Turner Palgrave (1824–1897) English poet and critic

"A Danish Barrow".

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“And there the lovely Lily grew,
The summer's purest flower,
And many a tiny fairy knew
The shelter of its bower”

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

(7th June 1834) The History of the Lily
(25th October 1834) The Exile. See under Translations from the French
(1835) For Versions from the German, see under Translations from the German
The London Literary Gazette, 1833-1835

Oliver Wendell Holmes photo

“You inherit your notions from a set of priests that had no wives and no children, or none to speak of, and so let their humanity die out of them.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes book Elsie Venner

Elsie Venner (1859)
Context: You inherit your notions from a set of priests that had no wives and no children, or none to speak of, and so let their humanity die out of them. It didn't seem much to them to condemn a few thousand millions of people to purgatory or worse for a mistake of judgment. They didn't know what it was to have a child look up in their faces and say 'Father!' It will take you a hundred or two more years to get decently humanized, after so many centuries of de-humanizing celibacy.

“It seemed to me that I, the spirit of so many worlds, the flower of so many ages, was the Church Cosmical, fit at last to be the bride of God. But instead I was blinded and seared and struck down by terrible light.”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter XIII: The Beginning and the End; 3. The Supreme Moment and After (p. 163)

Related topics