“One white rose... or is it pink, to-day?”
They pause and smile, not caring what they say,
If only they may talk.
The crowd flows past them like dividing waters.
Dreaming they stand, dreaming they walk.
The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)
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Conrad Aiken 70
American novelist and poet 1889–1973Related quotes
A White Rose, lines 1-4, in In Bohemia (1886), p. 24.
“If life hands you a lemon adjust your rose colored glasses and start to selling pink lemonade.”
Anonymous, 1917, THE CONDUCTOR AND THE BRAKEMAN
“"The Happiest Days of Our Lives" on The Wall (Pink Floyd, 1979)”
“Frail the white rose and frail are
Her hands that gave”
A Flower Given To My Daughter, p. 11
Pomes Penyeach (1927)
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Context: These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.
This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see, —painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them, and are willing to let the words go; for, at any time, they can use words as good when occasion comes. If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn.
1990 Interview with Des Lynam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duOUcH7xFrg]
