No. 54.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
“Where you tend a rose my lad, a thistle cannot grow.”
Variant: Two things cannot be in one place. Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow.
Source: The Secret Garden
“No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose.”
“Rose, oh pure contradiction, desire,
To be no one's sleep under so many
Lids.”
Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust,
Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel
Lidern.
Rilke wrote his own epitaph sometime before October 27, 1925. He requested that it be inscribed on his gravestone. This was fifteen months before his death. (Translation: John J.L.Mood)
Source: The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
Source: Democracy: An American Novel (1880), Ch. I, first lines
Context: For reasons which many persons thought ridiculous, Mrs. Lightfoot Lee decided to pass the winter in Washington. She was in excellent health, but she said that the climate would do her good.
Song Roses of Picardy http://www.firstworldwar.com/audio/rosesofpicardy.htm
“Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.”
"Sacred Emily"
This statement, written in 1913 and first published in Geography and Plays, is thought to have originally been inspired by the work of the artist Sir Francis Rose; a painting of his was in her Paris drawing-room.
See also the Wikipedia article: Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose
Nigel Rees explains the phrase thus: "The poem 'Sacred Emily' by Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) is well-nigh impenetrable to the average reader but somehow it has managed to give a format phrase to the language. If something is incapable of explanation, one says, for example, 'a cloud is a cloud is a cloud.' What Stein wrote, however, is frequently misunderstood. She did not say 'A rose is a rose is a rose,' as she might well have done, but 'Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose' (i.e. no indefinite article at the start and three not two repetitions.) The Rose in question was not a flower but an allusion to the English painter, Sir Francis Rose, 'whom she and I regarded' wrote Constantine Fitzgibbon, 'as the peer of Matisse and Picasso, and whose paintings — or at least painting — hung in her Paris drawing-room while a Gauguin was relegated to the lavatory.'" - Sayings of the Century, page 91
Geography and Plays (1922)
The Little White Rose
“I'll go where secrets are sold
Where roses unfold
I'll sleep as time goes by”
Lemon
Because I Can
