Quotes about carnation

A collection of quotes on the topic of carnation, flowers, flower, love.

Quotes about carnation

“The flower,’ said Bernard, ‘the red carnation that stood in the vase on the table of the restaurant when we dined together with Percival, is become a six-sided flower; made of six lives.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

section VIII
The Waves (1931)

“I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: 100 Love Sonnets

“These nymphs I would perpetuate.
So clear
Their light carnation, that it floats in the air
Heavy with tufted slumbers. Was it a dream I loved?”

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) French Symbolist poet

The Afternoon of a Faun (1876)

Love, Dreams, Light

“Before the ferry leaves a horse and wagon comes aboard, a brokendown springwagon loaded with flowers, driven by a little brown man with high cheekbones. Jimmy Herf walks around it; behind the drooping horse with haunches like a hatrack the little warped wagon is unexpectedly merry, stacked with pots of scarlet and pink geraniums, carnations, alyssum, forced roses, blue lobelia. A rich smell of maytime earth comes from it, of wet flowerpots and greenhouses. The driver sits hunched with his hat over his eyes. Jimmy has an impulse to ask him where he is going with all of those flowers, but he stifles it.”

John Dos Passos book Manhattan Transfer

Source: Manhattan Transfer (1925), p. 403

“"Is it agreeable?" somebody asked.
"Neither agreeable nor disagreeable," I answered. "it just is." Istigkeit - wasn't that the word Meister Eckhart liked to use? "Is-ness." The Being of Platonic philosophy - except that Plato seems to have made the enormous, the grotesque mistake of separating Being from becoming and identifying it with the mathematical abstraction of the Idea. He could never, poor fellow, have seen a bunch of flowers shining with their own inner light and all but quivering under the pressure of the significance with which they were charged; could never have perceived that what rose and iris and carnation so intensely signified was nothing more, and nothing less, than what they were - a transience that was yet eternal life, a perpetual perishing that was at the same time pure Being, a bundle of minute, unique particulars in which, by some unspeakable and yet self-evident paradox, was to be seen the divine source of all existence.”

Aldous Huxley book The Doors of Perception

page 4-5
The Doors of Perception (1954)

Life, Flowers, Mathematics, Idea

“We are getting carried away by the on-the-move musicians. Most of the Carnatic concerts abroad are being organised by NRIs. The defining moment is when an artist is invited to a foreign land and applauded by the foreign nationals. They should forge artistic alliances and find new audiences by introducing people of other nationalities to our arts.”

M. Balamuralikrishna (1930–2016) Carnatic vocalist, instrumentalist and playback singer

Source: Chitra Swaminathan "He defines ‘style’ as tradition".

“If you gave me a fresh carnation, I would only crush its tender petals…”

Paul Weller (singer) (1958) English singer-songwriter, Guitarist

Carnation
The Gift (1982)

“And in my flower-beds, I think,
Smile the carnation and the pink.”

Rupert Brooke (1887–1915) British poet

"The Old Vicarage, Grantchester" (1912)

Smile, Flowers, Thinking

“The King's colours were white and black, which he always wore in honour of the Duchess of Valentinois, who was a widow. The Duke of Ferrara and his retinue had yellow and red. Monsieur de Guise's carnation and white. It was not known at first for what reason he wore those colours, but it was soon remembered that they were the colours of a beautiful young lady whom he had been in love with, while she was a maid, and whom he yet loved though he durst not show it. The Duke de Nemours had yellow and black; why he had them could not be found out: Madam de Cleves only knew the reason of it; she remembered to have said before him she loved yellow, and that she was sorry her complexion did not suit that colour. As for the Duke, he thought he might take that colour without any indiscretion, since not being worn by Madam de Cleves it could not be suspected to be hers.”

Madame de La Fayette book La Princesse de Clèves

La Princesse de Clèves (1678) (Kessinger Publishing, 2004, ISBN 1419178717), p. 89

“The real issue underlying these controversies appears to have been a challenge to his philosophy of music; nay, that of the Trinity. Balamuralikrishna has long held that Carnatic music today is an entity outside the strictly religious domain. He remarked once that those who believed that concert singing denigrated the essence of Carnatic music should confine their singing to puja rooms.”

M. Balamuralikrishna (1930–2016) Carnatic vocalist, instrumentalist and playback singer

Garimella Subramaniam in: "A musical colossus".

Music, Singing, Appearance

“He was a genius who could not only transcend all theoretical boundaries of a technique, but verily transport any category of listener to a sublime realm. No wonder, he had among his fans as many votaries of Hindustani style as its Carnatic counterpart.”

Bhimsen Joshi (1922–2011) Indian vocalist

Critique