Robert Herrick book Hesperides
"The Rose" (published c. 1648). Compare: "Flower of all hue, and without thorn the rose", John Milton, Paradise Lost, book iv. line 256.; "Every rose has it's thorn", Poison, "Every Rose Has Its Thorn".
Hesperides (1648)
“No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher
“But he, that dares not grasp the thorn
Should never crave the rose.”
Anne Brontë (1820–1849) British novelist and poet
The Narrow Way (1848)
Context: On all her breezes borne
Earth yields no scents like those;
But he, that dares not grasp the thorn
Should never crave the rose.
“A stranger's rose is but a thorn.”
Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright
In Alien Lands, translated by Leah W. Leonard.
“Romantic: one who professes to prefer the thorns to the rose.”
Yahia Lababidi (1973)
Signposts to Elsewhere (2008)
Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer
Section 7 : Spiritual Progress
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: By what sort of experience are we led to the conviction that spirit exists? On the whole, by searching, painful experience. The rose Religion grows on a thorn-bush, and we must not be afraid to have our fingers lacerated by the thorns if we would pluck the rose.
“Life is full of paradoxes, as roses are of thorns.”
Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet
Source: The Book of Disquiet
“every time I've held a rose,
It seems I only felt the thorns”
Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist
