Quotes about flower
page 2

Leo Tolstoy photo
Anthony de Mello photo

“As the Arabs say, "The nature of rain is the same, but it makes thorns grow in the marshes and flowers in the gardens.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Source: Awareness: Conversations with the Masters

F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Henri Matisse photo

“There are flowers everywhere for those who want to see them”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

1940s, Jazz (1947)

Sylvia Plath photo
Tim Burton photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Virginia Woolf photo

“Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”

Mrs Dalloway (1925)
Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Paul Verlaine photo
David Lynch photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Sylvia Plath photo
Jane Austen photo
Robert Jordan photo
Guy Gavriel Kay photo
Jeremy Bentham photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Oscar Wilde photo
George Carlin photo
William Shakespeare photo
John Keats photo
Victor Hugo photo
Francesca Lia Block photo
Nathan Bedford Forrest photo
Michael Oakeshott photo

“Poetry is a sort of truancy, a dream within the dream of life, a wild flower planted among our wheat.”

Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990) British philosopher

Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962)

Honoré de Balzac photo

“A young bride is like a plucked flower; but a guilty wife is like a flower that had been walked over.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Une jeune fille est comme une fleur qu'on a cueillie; mais la femme coupable est une fleur sur laquelle on a marché.
Honorine http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Honorine (1845), translated by Clara Bell

Jean De La Fontaine photo

“No path of flowers leads to glory.”

Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.

Book X, fable 14; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Fables (1668–1679)

Adam Mickiewicz photo

“For mum we're fly. What mum you don't know who am I? I am Józio. And this is my sister Rózia. Now we're fly in sky! There is better than mum. See how heads in ray. Clothes with lucifer light. And on my hand as butterfly airfoil in sky we have all what we want, every day other toy, where we go here is grass, where we touch here is a flower. But we have what we want, torture us boring and trepidation. Oh mum for Your children road to heaven has been closed! On Always!”

Do mamy lecim do mamy! Cóż to, mamo nie znasz Józia? Ja to Józio ja ten samy. A to moja siostra Rózia. My teraz w raju latamy, Tam nam lepiej niż u mamy. Patrz jakie główki w promieniu, Ubiór z jutrzenki światełka, A na oboim ramieniu Jak u motylków skrzydełka, w raju wszystkiego dostatek, Co dzień to inna zabawka, gdzie stąpim wypływa trawka, gdzie dotkniem rozkwita kwiatek. Lecz choć wszystkiego dostatek dręczy nad nuda i trwoga. Ach mamo dla twoich dziatek zamknięta do nieba droga!
Part two.
Dziady (Forefathers' Eve) http://www.ap.krakow.pl/nkja/literature/polpoet/mic_fore.htm

Robert Herrick photo
Plato photo
Kālidāsa photo
Robert Frost photo

“Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" Fragmentary Blue http://www.ketzle.com/frost/fragblue.htm", st. 1 (1923)
1920s

Georgia O'Keeffe photo

“I hate flowers — I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move!”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

quote in Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe, Laurie Lisle, Viking Press, New York, 1981, p. 180
1980s

Herman Melville photo
Mao Zedong photo

“Marxists should not be afraid of criticism from any quarter. Quite the contrary, they need to temper and develop themselves and win new positions in the teeth of criticism and in the storm and stress of struggle. Fighting against wrong ideas is like being vaccinated -- a man develops greater immunity from disease as a result of vaccination. Plants raised in hothouses are unlikely to be hardy. Carrying out the policy of letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend will not weaken, but strengthen, the leading position of Marxism in the ideological field.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

" VIII. ON "LET A HUNDRED FLOWERS BLOSSOM LET A HUNDRED SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT CONTEND" AND "LONG-TERM COEXISTENCE AND MUTUAL SUPERVISION" "
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Original: (zh-CN) 马克思主义者不应该害怕任何人批评。相反,马克思主义者就是要在人们的批评中间,就是要在斗争的风雨中间,锻炼自己,发展自己,扩大自己的阵地。同错误思想作斗争,好比种牛痘,经过了牛痘疫苗的作用,人身上就增强免疫力。在温室里培养出来的东西,不会有强大的生命力。实行百花齐放、百家争鸣的方针,并不会削弱马克思主义在思想界的领导地位,相反地正是会加强它的这种地位。

Brian W. Aldiss photo
Axel Munthe photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Marcel Proust photo

“When from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.And once again I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy), immediately the old gray house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theater.”

Mais, quand d’un passé ancien rien ne subsiste, après la mort des êtres, après la destruction des choses, seules, plus frêles mais plus vivaces, plus immatérielles, plus persistantes, plus fidèles, l’odeur et la saveur restent encore longtemps, comme des âmes, à se rappeler, à attendre, à espérer, sur la ruine de tout le reste, à porter sans fléchir, sur leur gouttelette presque impalpable, l’édifice immense du souvenir.<p>Et dès que j’eus reconnu le goût du morceau de madeleine trempé dans le tilleul que me donnait ma tante (quoique je ne susse pas encore et dusse remettre à bien plus tard de découvrir pourquoi ce souvenir me rendait si heureux), aussitôt la vieille maison grise sur la rue, où était sa chambre, vint comme un décor de théâtre.
"Overture"
In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol I: Swann's Way (1913)

Albert Schweitzer photo

“Most men are scantily nourished on a modicum of happiness and a number of empty thoughts which life lays on their plates. They are kept in the road of life through stern necessity by elemental duties which they cannot avoid.
Again and again their will-to-live becomes, as it were, intoxicated: spring sunshine, opening flowers, moving clouds, waving fields of grain — all affect it. The manifold will-to-live, which is known to us in the splendid phenomena in which it clothes itself, grasps at their personal wills. They would fain join their shouts to the mighty symphony which is proceeding all around them. The world seem beauteous…but the intoxication passes. Dreadful discords only allow them to hear a confused noise, as before, where they had thought to catch the strains of glorious music. The beauty of nature is obscured by the suffering which they discover in every direction. And now they see again that they are driven about like shipwrecked persons on the waste of ocean, only that the boat is at one moment lifted high on the crest of the waves and a moment later sinks deep into the trough; and that now sunshine and now darkening clouds lie on the surface of the water.
And now they would fain persuade themselves that land lies on the horizon toward which they are driven. Their will-to-live befools their intellect so that it makes efforts to see the world as it would like to see it. It forces this intellect to show them a map which lends support to their hope of land. Once again they essay to reach the shore, until finally their arms sink exhausted for the last time and their eyes rove desperately from wave to wave. …
Thus it is with the will-to-live when it is unreflective.
But is there no way out of this dilemma? Must we either drift aimlessly through lack of reflection or sink in pessimism as the result of reflection? No. We must indeed attempt the limitless ocean, but we may set our sails and steer a determined course.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 256

Claude Monet photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Paul Celan photo
Juan Antonio Villacañas photo

“Thought
is a flower from other worlds, a tale
that is torn in each written word.
……………I go outdoors
to give rest
to the soul’s tired muscles.”

Juan Antonio Villacañas (1922–2001) Spanish poet, essayist and critic

“Literaturaliae”, from Theme of My Biography (2000)

Nathalia Crane photo

“Across the downs a hummingbird
Came dipping through the bowers,
He pivoted on emptiness
To scrutinize the flowers.”

Nathalia Crane (1913–1998) American writer

"The First Reformer"
Lava Lane and Other Poems (1925)

Kanye West photo
Robert Browning photo

“The curious crime, the fine
Felicity and flower of wickedness.”

Book X: The Pope, line 590.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)

Amit Ray photo

“You are a cosmic flower. Om chanting is the process of opening the psychic petals of that flower.”

Amit Ray (1960) Indian author

OM Chanting and Meditation (2010) http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/OM_Chanting_and_Meditation.html?id=3KKjPoFmf4YC,

Pedro Calderón de la Barca photo

“These flowers, which were splendid and sprightly,
Waking in the dawn of the morning,
In the evening will be a pitiful frivolity,
Sleeping in the cold night’s arms.”

Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681) Spanish dramatist

Éstas que fueron pompa y alegría
despertando al albor de la mañana,
a la tarde serán lástima vana
durmiendo en brazos de la noche fría.
A las flores ("Éstas, que fueron pompa y alegría") http://es.wikisource.org/wiki/A_las_flores_%28Calder%C3%B3n_de_la_Barca%29.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh photo
Pablo Picasso photo
Fernando Pessoa photo

“To stagnate in the sun, goldenly, like an obscure lake surrounded by flowers.”

On a strictly intellectual life.
A Factless Autobiography, Richard Zenith Edition, Lisbon, 2006, p. 70
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Estagnar ao sol, douradamente, como um lago obscuro rodeado de flores.

Manmohan Acharya photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo

“I have never believed that the securing of material resources ought to form the central interest of human life—but have instead maintained that personality is an independent flowering of the intellect and emotions wholly apart from the struggle for existence. Formerly I accepted the archaic dictum that only a few can be relieved of the engulfing waste of the material struggle in its bitterest form—a dictum which is, of course, true in an agricultural age having scanty resources. Therefore I adopted an aristocratic attitude; regretfully arguing that life, in any degree of fulness, is only for the fortunate few whose ancestors' prowess has given them economic security and leisure. But I did not take the bourgeois position of praising struggle for its own sake. While recognising certain worthy qualities brought out by it, I was too much impressed by its stultifying attributes to regard it as other than a necessary evil. In my opinion, only the leisured aristocrat really had a chance at adequate life—nor did I despise him because he was not forced to struggle. Instead, I was sorry that so few could share his good fortune. Too much human energy was wasted in the mere scramble for food and shelter. The condition was tolerable only because inevitable in yesterday's world of scanty resources. Millions of men must go to waste in order that a few might really live. Still—if those few were not upheld, no high culture would ever be built up. I never had any use for the American pioneer's worship of work and self-reliance for their own sakes. These things are necessary in their place, but not ends in themselves—and any attempt to make them ends in themselves is essentially uncivilised. Thus I have no fundamental meeting-ground with the rugged Yankee individualist. I represent rather the mood of the agrarian feudalism which preceded the pioneering and capitalistic phases. My ideal of life is nothing material or quantitative, but simply the security and leisure necessary for the maximum flowering of the human spirit.... Well—so much for the past. Now we live in an age of easy abundance which makes possible the fulfilment of all moderate human wants through a relatively slight amount of labour. What shall be the result? Shall we still make resources prohibitively hard to get when there is really a plethora of them? Shall we allow antique notions of allocation—"property," etc.—to interfere with the rational distribution of this abundant stock of resources among all those who require them? Shall we value hardship and anxiety and uncertainty so fatuously as to impose these evils artificially on people who do not need to bear them, through the perpetuation of a set of now irrelevant and inapplicable rules of allocation? What reasonable objection is there to an intelligent centralised control of resources whose primary object shall be the elimination of want in every quarter—a thing possible without removing comfortable living from any one now enjoying it? To call the allocation of resources something "uncontrollable" by man—and in an age when virtually all natural forces are harnessed and utilised—is simply infantile. It is simply that those who now have the lion's share don't want any fresh or rational allocation. It is needless to say that no sober thinker envisages a workless equalitarian paradise. Much work remains, and human capacities differ. High-grade service must still receive greater rewards than low-grade service. But amidst the present abundance of goods and minimisation of possible work, there must be a fair and all-inclusive allocation of the chances to perform work and secure rewards. When society can't give a man work, it must keep him comfortable without it; but it must give him work if it can, and must compel him to perform it when it is needed. This does not involve interference with personal life and habits (contrary to what some reactionaries say), nor is the absence of insecurity anything to deplore.... But of course the real need of change comes not from the mere fact of abundant resources, but from the growth of conditions making it impossible for millions to have any chance of getting any resources under the present outworn set of artificial rules. This development is no myth. Machines had displaced 900,000 men in the U. S. before the crash of '29, and no conceivable regime of "prosperity" (where by a few people will have abundant and flexible resources and successfully exchange them among one another) will ever make it possible to avoid the permanent presence of millions of unemployed, so long as old-fashioned laissez-faire capitalism is adhered to.... And so I have readjusted my ideas. … I have gone almost reluctantly—step by step, as pressed by facts too insistent to deny—and am still quite as remote from Belknap's naive Marxism as I am from the equally naive Republican orthodoxy I have left behind. I am as set as ever against any cultural upheaval—and believe that nothing of the kind is necessary in order to achieve a new and feasible economic equilibrium. The best of culture has always been non-economic.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Hitherto it has grown out of the secure, non-struggling life of the aristocrat. In future it may be expected to grow out of the secure and not-so-struggling life of whatever citizens are personally able to develop it. There need be no attempt to drag culture down to the level of crude minds. That, indeed, would be something to fight tooth and nail! With economic opportunities artificially regulated, we may well let other interests follow a natural course. Inherent differences in people and in tastes will create different social-cultural classes as in the past—although the relation of these classes to the holding of material resources will be less fixed than in the capitalistic age now closing. All this, of course, is directly contrary to Belknap's rampant Stalinism—but I'm telling you I'm no bolshevik! I am for the preservation of all values worth preserving—and for the maintenance of complete cultural continuity with the Western-European mainstream. Don't fancy that the dethronement of certain purely economic concepts means an abrupt break in that stream. Rather does it mean a return to art impulses typically aristocratic (that is, disinterested, leisurely, non-ulterior) rather than bourgeois.
Letter to Clark Ashton Smith (28 October 1934), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 60-64
Non-Fiction, Letters

Robert Browning photo

“Kiss me as if you made believe
You were not sure, this eve,
How my face, your flower, had pursed
It's petals up.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

"In a Gondola", line 49 (1842).

Bruce Lee photo
Robert Pinsky photo

“All the mysteries of consciousness flower in the body.”

Robert Pinsky (1940) American poet, editor, literary critic, academic.

The Art of Poetry - interview 1995 with Downing & Kunitz

Jean Vanier photo
Friedrich Hölderlin photo
George Linley photo

“Tho' lost to sight, to memory dear
Thou ever wilt remain;
One only hope my heart can cheer,—
The hope to meet again.

Oh, fondly on the past I dwell,
And oft recall those hours
When, wandering down the shady dell,
We gathered the wild-flowers.

Yes, life then seemed one pure delight,
Tho' now each spot looks drear;
Yet tho' thy smile be lost to sight,
To memory thou art dear.

Oft in the tranquil hour of night,
When stars illume the sky,
I gaze upon each orb of light,
And wish that thou wert by.

I think upon that happy time,
That time so fondly loved,
When last we heard the sweet bells chime,
As thro' the fields we roved.”

George Linley (1798–1865) British writer

Song, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). This song was written and composed by Linley for Mr. Augustus Braham, and sung by him. It is not known when it was written,—probably about 1830. Another song, entitled "Though lost to Sight, to Memory dear," was published in London in 1880, purporting to have been written by Ruthven Jenkyns in 1703 and published in the "Magazine for Mariners". That magazine, however, never existed, and the composer of the music acknowledged, in a private letter, that he copied the words from an American newspaper. The reputed author, Ruthven Jenkyns, was living, under another name, in California in 1882.

Sukirti Kandpal photo

“If I was in a 9-6 job, I would want to come home and see someone pleasant on television. I don't mean that someone has to be extremely gorgeous, but there has to be a pleasant personality. The moment you look at a flower you feel nice — that is exactly what beauty does to a person. With good looks, things surely become easier.”

Sukirti Kandpal (1987) Indian actress

On the need of good looks for success in industry https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tv/news/hindi/My-boyfriend-doesnt-enjoy-watching-my-romantic-scenes-Sukirti-Kandpal/articleshow/20330247.cms/

Suman Pokhrel photo
Ghani Khan photo
Nanak photo
Bahá'u'lláh photo
Henry Van Dyke photo
Caspar David Friedrich photo
Suman Pokhrel photo

“Even if they (Children) try to pluck it,
the flower submits itself onto their hands.
If it happens to prick their heels,
the thorn scorns itself all its life.”

Suman Pokhrel (1967) Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist

<span class="plainlinks"> Children http://www.occupypoetry.net/children_1/</span>
From Poetry

Anthony de Mello photo

“Whatever is truly alive must die. Look at the flowers; only plastic flowers never die.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Flow
One Minute Wisdom (1989)

Virginia Woolf photo
William Wordsworth photo

“To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Intimations of Immortality Stanza 11.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Karl Marx photo
Edgar Allan Poe photo

“Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely—flowers.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

"Israfel", st. 7 (1831).

Thomas Mann photo
Algernon Charles Swinburne photo
Al-Maʿarri photo
Rabindranath Tagore photo
Fernando Pessoa photo

“I'm a keeper of [[sheep.
The sheep are my thoughts. ]]I'm a keeper of sheep.
The sheep are my thoughts
And each thought a sensation.
I think with my eyes and my ears
And with my hands and feet
And with my nose and mouth.To think a flower is to see and smell it,
And to eat a fruit is to know its meaning.That is why on a hot day
When I enjoy it so much I feel sad,
And I lie down in the grass
And close my warm eyes,
Then I feel my whole body lying down in reality,
I know the truth, and I'm happy.</p”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

<p>Sou um guardador de rebanhos.
O rebanho é os meus pensamentos
E os meus pensamentos são todos sensações.
Penso com os olhos e com os ouvidos
E com as mãos e os pés
E com o nariz e a boca.
Pensar uma flor é vê-la e cheirá-la
E comer um fruto é saber-lhe o sentido.</p><p>Por isso quando num dia de calor
Me sinto triste de gozá-lo tanto,
E me deito ao comprido na erva,
E fecho os olhos quentes,
Sinto todo o meu corpo deitado na realidade,
Sei a verdade e sou feliz.</p>
Alberto Caeiro (heteronym), O Guardador de Rebanhos ("The Keeper of Sheep"), IX — in A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe, trans. Richard Zenith (Penguin, 2006)

“Deserted now the Imperial bowers
Save by some few poor lonely flowers…
One white-haired dame,
An emperor's flame,
Sits down and tells of bygone hours.”

"At an Old Palace" (《行宫》), in Gems of Chinese Literature, trans. Herbert A. Giles
Variant translations:
Deserted now imperial bowers.
For whom still redden palace flowers?
Some white-haired chambermaids at leisure
Talk of the late emperor's pleasure.
"At an Old Palace", in Song of the Immortals: An Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry, trans. Yuanchong Xu (Beijing: New World Press, 1994), p. 128
The ancient Palace lies in desolation spread.
The very garden flowers in solitude grow red.
Only some withered dames with whitened hair remain,
Who sit there idly talking of mystic monarchs dead.
"The Ancient Palace", as translated by W. J. B. Fletcher in Lotus and Chrysanthemum: An Anthology of Chinese and Japanese Poetry (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1934), p. 107

George Chapman photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Leaves grow green to fall,
Flowers grow fair to fade,
Fruits grow ripe to rot —
All but for passing made.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(14th October 1826) Changes
The London Literary Gazette, 1826

Thomas De Quincey photo
Marquis de Sade photo
Claude Monet photo

“There at the moment in Honfleur... Boudin and Jongkind are here; we get on marvelously. There's lots to be learned and nature begins to grow beautiful... I shall tell you I'm sending a flower picture to the exhibition at Rouen; there are very beautiful flowers at present.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in a letter to Frédéric Bazille; as cited in: Edward B. Henning, Cleveland Museum of Art. Creativity in art and science, 1860-1960. (1987), p. 95
1850 - 1870

Steven Weinberg photo
Paul Valéry photo

“The being filled with wonder is lovely, like a flower.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Lucretius, p. 163
Dialogue de l'arbre (1943)

Heinrich Heine photo

“You're lovely as a flower,
So pure and fair to see;
I look at you, and sadness
Comes stealing over me.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Du bist wie eine Blume,
So hold und schön und rein;
Ich schau dich an, und Wehmut
Schleicht mir ins Herz hinein.
Du Bist Wie eine Blume, st. 1

Thomas Moore photo

“Fly not yet; 't is just the hour
When pleasure, like the midnight flower
That scorns the eye of vulgar light,
Begins to bloom for sons of night
And maids who love the moon.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Fly not yet.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Lewis Carroll photo
Ludwig Tieck photo

“He who does not love a flower, has lost all love and fear of God.”

Ludwig Tieck (1773–1853) German poet, translator, editor, novelist, and critic

Wer keine Blume mehr liebt, dem ist alle Liebe und Gottesfurcht verloren.
"Der Runenberg", from Phantasus (1812-16) http://ftp4.de.freesbie.org/pub/misc/gutenberg-de/1996/gutenb/tieck/runenbrg/runbrg3.htm; translation from Thomas Carlyle German Romance: Specimens of its Chief Authors, (London: Tait, 1827), vol. 2, p. 107.

Nathan Bedford Forrest photo
Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Rajneesh photo

“The tantra masters are simply wild flowers, they have everything in them.”

Rajneesh (1931–1990) Godman and leader of the Rajneesh movement

Tantra: the Supreme Understanding (1984)

Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Claude Monet photo

“Nothing in the whole world is of interest to me but my painting and my flowers.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

his remark, shortly after the death of his second wife Alice in 1911; as quoted in: K.E. Sullivan Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 76
1900 - 1920