“The American Beauty Rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it.”
Address to the students of Brown University, quoted in Ida Tarbell (1904) The History of the Standard Oil Company
Context: The American Beauty Rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it. This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and a law of God.
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John D. Rockefeller, Jr.15
American financier and philanthropist 1874–1960Related quotes
“Which of you knows the fragrance of a rose?”
Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer
Words
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Context: The disciples were absorbed in a discussion of Lao-tzu's dictum: Those who know do not say; Those who say do not know.
When the master entered, they asked him what the words meant.
Said the master, "Which of you knows the fragrance of a rose?"
All of them indicated that they knew.
Then he said, "put it into words."
All of them were silent.
“Not only around our infancy
Doth heaven with all its splendors lie”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat
Prelude to Pt. I, st. 2
The Vision of Sir Launfal (1848)
Context: Not only around our infancy
Doth heaven with all its splendors lie;
Daily, with souls that cringe and plot,
We Sinais climb and know it not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Nominalist and Realist
“The budding rose above the rose full blown.”
William Wordsworth book The Prelude
Bk. XI, l. 121.
The Prelude (1799-1805)
“Behold the grass, the flowerets, and the shrubs
Which of itself alone this land produces.”
Dante Alighieri book Purgatorio
Canto XXVII, lines 134–135 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio
“The best way to killing a rose is to force it open when it is still only the promise of a bud.”
José Saramago book The Cave
Source: The Cave (2000), p. 89 (Vintage 2003)
John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States
No. 3
1770s, Novanglus essays (1774–1775)