Quotes about flower
page 9

“Always when we walked, it was clear to me how much he loved nature, wild flowers, animals in their natural habitat and the simple pleasures of a beautiful sunset. My love for the environment did not develop out of a vacuum.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

p 21, describing his father
Achieving The Impossible (2010)

Love, Pleasure, Beauty, Flowers

“Love, when it fits inside a flower, is infinite.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Voces (1943)

Love, Flowers

“There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearl’d Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender bluebells at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets
Its mother’s face with heaven-collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

The Question http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1907.html (1820), st. 2

Flowers, Birth, Tear

“Alas! The beauty
of the flowers has faded
and come to nothing,
while I have watched the rain,
lost in melancholy thought.”

Ono no Komachi (825–900) Japanese poet

Source: Helen Craig McCullough's translations, Kokin Wakashū: The First Imperial Anthology of Japanese Poetry (1985), p. 35

Beauty, Flowers

“Can you look at a flower without thinking?”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

4th Discussion with Young People, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (23 May 1968)
1960s

Flowers, Thinking

““Tell me! What do you think of life? What do you think of ambition? What do you think of science, of learning, of love, of fame, of glory, of aspiration?”
“I think… that those are all very different things.”
“You are wrong. They are all one thing—a cunt.”
“Sir?”
“A cunt! Consider: The cunt is a nasty, ugly, filthy thing. Yet we desire it so greatly as to be willing to suffer any indignity to attain it. For the sake of it we labor and preen and whisper sugary words. We go to the theatre with flowers in our arms, climb over back walls by moonlight, write sonnets, jump out of windows with our trousers in our hands, give dangerous men their choice of weapons. We build love-nests for it sake, and cities, and civilizations. It is our all, our only, our ideal. It has created us and made us great. Such is life, such is ambition, such is science, learning, love, fame, glory, and aspiration. The Eternal Cunt,” he said significantly, “draws us onward.””

Michael Swanwick book Jack Faust

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 16, “The Wild Hunt” (p. 276)

Love, Life, Men, Flowers

“He whom we anatomized
‘whose words we gathered as pleasant flowers
and thought on his wit and how neatly he described things’
speaks
to us, hatching marrow,
broody all night over the bones of a deadman.”

Basil Bunting (1900–1985) Poet

from "Villon" (1930)

Flowers, Night

“My moon shines so softly
On the hair of my killer
Pours flowers on his head
Help me, give him some shelter!
Come, lie by the river
Rest your head, don't you fear
Sleep softly, my baby
They won't find you here.”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Children of the Sun (1969)

Lie, Fear, Flowers, Sleep

“Race of the rainbow wing, the deep blue eye
Whose palace was the bosom of a flower;
Who rode upon the breathing of the rose;
Drank from the harebell; made the moon the queen
Of their gay revels; and whose trumpets were
The pink-veined honeysuckle; and who rode
Upon the summer butterfly : who slept
Lulled in the sweetness of the violet's leaves,—
Where are ye now? And ye of eastern tale,
With your bright palaces, your emerald halls;
Gardens whose fountains were of liquid gold;
Trees with their ruby fruit and silver leaves,—
Where are ye now?”

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

(12th June 1824) Stanzas
The London Literary Gazette, 1824

Flowers, Tree, Summer

“It's so nice to get flowers while you can still smell the fragrance.”

Lena Horne (1917–2010) American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer

Quoted in People magazine, 10 November 1980 http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20077832,00.html

Flowers

“Since Lord Brougham assailed Dr Young, the world has seen no such specimen of the insolence of a shallow pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science."
And all this high and mighty talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr. Darwin's equals, proceeds from a writer whose want of intelligence, or of conscience, or of both, is so great, that, by way of an objection to Mr. Darwin's views, he can ask, "Is it credible that all favourable varieties of turnips are tending to become men?"; who is so ignorant of paleontology, that he can talk of the "flowers and fruits" of the plants of the Carboniferous epoch; of comparative anatomy, that he can gravely affirm the poison apparatus of the venomous snakes to be "entirely separate from the ordinary laws of animal life, and peculiar to themselves"…
Nor does the reviewer fail to flavour this outpouring of preposterous incapacity with a little stimulation of the odium theologicum. Some inkling of the history of the conflicts between Astronomy, Geology, and Theology, leads him to keep a retreat open by the proviso that he cannot "consent to test the truth of Natural Science by the word of Revelation;" but, for all that, he devotes pages to the exposition of his conviction that Mr. Darwin's theory "contradicts the revealed relation of the creation to its Creator," and is "inconsistent with the fulness of his glory."”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

If I confine my retrospect of the reception of the 'Origin of Species' to a twelvemonth, or thereabouts, from the time of its publication, I do not recollect anything quite so foolish and unmannerly as the Quarterly Review article...
Huxley's commentary on the Samuel Wilberforce review of the Origin of Species in the Quarterly Review.
1880s, On the Reception of the Origin of Species (1887)

Life, Men, Truth, Age

“My will is easy to decide,
For there is nothing to divide.
My kin don't need to fuss and moan —
"Moss does not cling to a rolling stone."

My body? — Oh! — If I could choose,
I would to ashes it reduce,
And let the merry breezes blow
My dust to where some flowers grow.

Perhaps some fading flower then
Would come to life and bloom again.
This is my last and final will.
Good luck to all of you. [Joe Hill]”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

My Last Will http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/My_Last_Will (1915-11-18)

Life, Flowers

“So be sweet and kind to mother
Now and then, have a chat!
Buy her candy or some flowers or a brand-new hat
But maybe you best let it go at that!
Or you may find yourself with a quite complex
…Com-plex!
…and…
You may end up like Oedipus
I'd rather marry a duck-billed platypus!
Than end up like poor Oedipus Rex!”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

"Oedipus Rex", final stanza
An Evening (Wasted) With Tom Lehrer (1959)

Flowers

“Tis May again, another May,
Looking as if it meant to stay;
So many are its thousand flowers,
So glorious are its sunny hours,
So green its earth, so blue its sky,
As made for Hope's eternity.”

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

The Golden Violet - title poem - The First Day
The Golden Violet (1827)

Hope, Flowers

“A seed is small in size. But it carries in its womb leaves, flowers, fruits, nay even the whole tree. The human brain is very much like a seed. It may not have a great shape and size. But it traps within itself endless possibilities. It is a fountainhead of thoughts and promises that can be fulfilled.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Source: Soul Curry for You and Me: An Empowering Philosophy that Can Enrich Your Life, P. 113.

Flowers, Tree

“I suddenly remember the distance that I must travel;
I spring from bed and look out to see the time.
The stars and planets are all grown dim in the sky;
Long, long is the road; I cannot stay.
I am going on service, away to the battle-ground,
And I do not know when I shall come back.
I hold your hand with only a deep sigh;
Afterwards, tears—in the days when we are parted.
With all your might enjoy the spring flowers,
But do not forget the time of our love and pride.”

Su Wu

To His Wife (c. 100 BC); written when Su Wu was called to battle against the Hsiung-nu; on parting from his wife.
Translated by Arthur Waley, in A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918), p. 73

Love, Travel, Star, Spring

“It gives my brain a rest, painting flowers. I don't feel the same tension as when I have a model in front of me. When I paint flowers, I put on colours and try out values boldly, without worrying about wasting a canvas. I wouldn't dare to do it with a figure; I'd be afraid of spoiling the whole thing. And the experience I gain this way is then applied to my pictures.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Source: undated quotes, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 196 : quote on painting flowers, to art-buyer George Riviere, who was watching a flower still-life of Renoir.

Way, Feeling, Flowers, Painting

“Flowers fade and fly, and flying fill the sky;
Their bloom departs, their perfume gone, yet who stands pitying by? …
Oh, let me sadly bury them beside these steps to-night! …
Farewell, dear flowers, for ever now, thus buried as 'twas best,
I have not yet divined when I with you shall sink to rest.
I who can bury flowers like this a laughing-stock shall be;
I cannot say in days to come what hands shall bury me.
See how when spring begins to fail each opening floweret fades;
So too there is a time of age and death for beauteous maids;
And when the fleeting spring is gone, and days of beauty o'er,
Flowers fall, and lovely maidens die, and both are known no more.”

Herbert Giles book A History of Chinese Literature

"The Hung Lou Mêng", p. 368
A History of Chinese Literature (1901)

Love, Death, Age, Beauty

“Her robe is a cloud, her face a flower;
Her balcony, glimmering with the bright spring dew,
Is either the tip of earth's Jade Mountain,
Or a moon-edged roof of paradise.”

Li Bai (701–762) Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

"A Song Of Pure Happiness I" (清平调之一)

Mountain, Spring, Flowers

“A hint of ‘I’m so pleased that you strong, handsome, stalwart men are going to stand between my flower-like beauty and danger,’ wouldn’t hurt either”

Alice Borchardt book The Silver Wolf

The Silver Wolf

Men, Beauty, Flowers, Strong

“Oh, softest is the cheek's love-ray
When seen by moonlight hours
Other roses seek the day,
But blushes are night flowers.”

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

When Should Lover’s Breathe Their Vows from The London Literary Gazette (24th November 1821)
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Love, Flowers, Night

“Today's Real Man is probably closest to Spencer Tracy or Gary Cooper in spirit; he realizes that while birds, flowers, poetry, and small children do not add to the quality of life in quite the same manner as a Super Bowl and six-pack of Budweiser, he's learned to appreciate them anyway.”

Bruce Feirstein book Real Men Don't Eat Quiche

Real Men Don't Eat Quiche, ch. 2 http://books.google.com/books?id=VKuGe7aiswcC&q=%22Today's+Real+Man+is+probably+closest+to+Spencer+Tracy+or+Gary+Cooper+in+spirit+he+realizes+that+while+birds+flowers+poetry+and+small+children+do+not+add+to+the+quality+of+life+in+quite+the+same+manner+as+a+Super+Bowl+and+six-pack+of+Budweiser+he's+learned+to+appreciate+them+anyway%22&pg=PA18#v=onepage

Life, Children, Flowers, Bird

“Nor rough, nor barren, are the winding ways
Of hoar antiquity, but strown with flowers.”

Thomas Warton (1728–1790) English literary historian, critic, poet

"Sonnet Written in a Blank Leaf of Dugdale's Monasticon" (1777), line 13.

Way, Flowers

“A strict allegory is like a puzzle with a solution: a great romance is like a flower whose smell reminds you of something you can't quite place. I think the something is 'the whole quality of life as we actually experience it.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

C. S. Lewis' Letters to Children – letter to Lucy (11 September 1958)

Life, Flowers, Thinking

“He who has two cakes of bread, let him dispose of one of them for some flowers of the narcissus; for bread is the food of the body, and the narcissus is the food of the soul.”

Galén (129–216) Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher

Arabian Society In The Middle Ages, by Edward William Lane, (1883) citing Nowwájee, En-, Shems-ed-deen Moḥammad (died 1454), Ḥalbet El-Kumeyt, at footnote 167.
Latter day attributions

Food, Soul, Flowers

“Bright flower! whose home is everywhere
Bold in maternal nature's care
And all the long year through the heir
Of joy or sorrow,
Methinks that there abides in thee
Some concord with humanity,
Given to no other flower I see
The forest through.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

To the Daisy (third poem), st. 1 (1803).

Home, Flowers, Nature, Joy

“Flowers, the sole luxury which nature knew,
In Eden's pure and guiltless garden grew—
Gay without toil, and lovely without art,
They spring to cheer the sense, and glad the heart.”

Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743–1825) English author

Poems (1773), "To a Lady, with some painted Flowers", p. 96.

Love, Art, Spring, Flowers

“Consider the honey-bee. Its treasure is nectar, obtained even from the chilly plant. It is not at the cost of the flower. In fact, its act of extracting honey contributes to the progress of the flowers. You need not learn from Kahlil Gibran, Marx or Gorbachev, not even from Gandhiji. Choose instead to learn your lesson from the honey bees as your silent partners: they will show you how to develop without destroying.”

Baba Amte (1914–2008) Indian freedom fighter, social worker

On Community living
Baba Amte's Words of Wisdom

Flowers, Learning, Bee

“A dark and troubled abstention:
Put a flower for me in the most secret garden
In a horizon of grace and clarity
Which was untouchable and next.A static promise in the light of the moon
Of the density which was corporal in me.
It is not the fault, it is the memory
Of the first morning of the sin
Without Eve and Adam.Only the proven fruit
And the rolled serpent
In my loneliness.”

Natália Correia (1923–1993) Portuguese writer

Uma obscura e inquieta castidade:
pôs uma flor para mim no jardim mais secreto
num horizonte de graça e claridade
intangível e perto.<p>Promessa estática no luar
da densidade em mim corpórea.
não é a culpa, é a memoria
da primeira manhã do pecado
sem Eva e sem Adão.<p>Só o fruto provado
e a serpente enroscada
na minha solidão.
Obscura Castidade (Dark Abstention).

Secret, Flowers, Light, Memory

“The large 'White Flower' [Georgia painted in 1929] with the golden heart is something I have to say about White – quite different from what White has been meaning to me. Whether the flower or the color is the focus I do not know. I do know that the flower is painted large to convey to you my experience of the flower – and what is my experience of the flower if it is not color.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

both quotes in a letter to William M. Milliken, New York November 1, 1930; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 227
1930s

Color, Flowers, Heart, Painting

“But just as the world grew right again,
We heard a wanderer out on the plain
Singing what none of us understood;
Yet we thought that the world grew thrice more sweet
And the meadows were blossoming under his feet.
And we felt a grand and beautiful fear,
For we knew that a marvellous thought drew near;
So we kept the glass for a little while:
And the skies grew deeper and twice as bright,
And the seas grew soft as a flower of light,
And the meadows rippled from stile to stile;
And memories danced in a musical throng
Thro' the blossom that scented the wonderful song.”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

Part III : The Mystic Ruby
The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), The Flower of Old Japan

World, Fear, Beauty, Music

“I have loved flowers that fade,
Within whose magic tents
Rich hues have marriage made
With sweet unmemoried scents:
A honeymoon delight,
A joy of love at sight,
That ages in an hour
My song be like a flower!”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

Bk. II, No. 13, I Have Loved Flowers That Fade http://www.poetry-online.org/bridges_i_have_loved_flowers_that_fade.htm, st. 1 (1879). <br class="br">Shorter Poems (1879-1893)

Love, Marriage, Age, Flowers

“Oh the dawn has come
And the song must be sung
And the flowers are melting.
What kind of language is this?”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sky of Honey (Disc 2)

Flowers

“The music of the people is like a rare and lovely flower growing amidst encroaching weeds. Thousands pass it, while others trample it under foot, and thus the chances are that it will perish before it is seen by the one discriminating spirit who will prize it above all else. The fact that no one has as yet arisen to make the most of it does not prove that nothing is there.”

Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) Czech composer

"Music in America", Harper's Monthly Magazine, February 1895.

Love, People, Music, Flowers

“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

“Call for the robin redbreast and the wren,
Since o'er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.”

John Webster The White Devil

Act V, scene iv.
The White Devil (1612)

Men, Flowers

“If being hit on the head by a falling flower tub could be worth cash to the victim, what price a child’s life under civil law?”

Lindsey Davis book The Ides of April

The Ides of April

Life, Law, Flowers

“The proprietor had hair so red that pigmentation had flowed out into every visible inch of his skin and even into the pinks of his eyes, as the colour of flowering cherry trees stains their leaves.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 13

Flowers, Tree

“But now he sleeps endlessly.
Now the moss and the grass
open with sure fingers
the flower of his skull.
And now his blood comes out singing;
singing along marshes and meadows,
slides on frozen horns,
faltering souls in the mist
stumbling over a thousand hoofs
like a long, dark, sad tongue,
to form a pool of agony
close to the starry Guadalquivir.
Oh, white wall of Spain!
Oh, black bull of sorrow!
Oh, hard blood of Ignacio!
Oh, nightingale of his veins!”

Federico García Lorca Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías

Pero ya duerme sin fin.
Ya los musgos y la hierba
abren con dedos seguros
la flor de su calavera.
Y su sangre ya viene cantando:
cantando por marismas y praderas,
resbalando por cuernos ateridos,
vacilando sin alma por la niebla,
tropezando con miles de pezuñas
como una larga, oscura, triste lengua,
para formar un charco de agonía
junto al Guadalquivir de las estrellas.
¡Oh blanco muro de España!
¡Oh negro toro de pena!
¡Oh sangre dura de Ignacio!
¡Oh ruiseñor de sus venas!
Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias (1935)

Sadness, Soul, Flowers, Sleep

“Adieu, the city's ceaseless hum,
The haunts of sensual life, adieu!
Green fields, and silent glens we come,
To spend this bright spring-day with you.Whether the hills and vales shall gleam
With beauty, is for us to choose;
For leaf and blossom, rock and stream,
Are coloured with the spirit's hues.Here, to the seeking soul, is brought
A nobler view of human fate,
And higher feeling, higher thought,
And glimpses of a higher state.Through change of time, on sea and shore,
Serenely nature smiles away;
Yon infinite blue sky bends o'er
Our world, as at the primal day.The self-renewing earth is moved
With youthful life each circling year;
And flowers that Ceres' daughter loved
At Enna, now are blooming here.Glad nature will this truth reveal,
That God is ours and we are His.
O friends, my friends! what joy to feel
That He our loving Father is!”

James Aldrich (1810–1856) American editor and minor poet

A Spring-Day Walk.

Love, Life, God, Fate

“Spring is in the air. In some places, that means longer days, blooming flowers and Opening Day. Here in New Jersey, the coming of spring means it’s the time of year when Trenton politicians ask us for more money. Not surprisingly, this year is no different.”

Tom Kean, Jr. (1968) Member of the New Jersey General Assembly and State Senate

On Jon Corzine's Budget (April 6, 2006); "The Corzine Budget: Same Old Tax and Spend ", Tom's Blog" (April 6, 2006) http://tomkean.com/today/index.cfm?e=user.about.blog&messageID=76.

Money, Spring, Flowers, Time

“Pale purple as the bloom on a ripe plum, veined with the gold of late flowering gorse, set with small slender birches, just turning yellow, with red-berried rowans and thicket of bracken, the heath lay steeped in sunshine.”

Flora Thompson (1876–1947) English author and poet

Source: Heatherly, Chapter 1

Flowers

“A colossal orange moon rolls as an unbelievable ball against intense blue. The silhouettes of the houses flank this blue on both sides, forming a childishly rigid little frame. As if we witness the birth of the song of flowers which are subordinated to this blue and dominated by the orange moon.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

she wrote in 1905
1895 - 1905
Source: Lettres a un Inconnu, (Notebook III, p. 120) - Aux sources de l'expressionnisme. Presentation par Gabrielle Dufour-Kowalska. Klincksieck, 1999. p. 156

Flowers, Birth, Housing

“Let the picture imitate nothing; let it nakedly present its raison d'être. We should indeed be ungrateful were we to deplore the absence of all those things flowers, or landscape, or faces whose mere reflection it might have been. Nevertheless, let us admit that the reminiscence of natural forms cannot be absolutely banished; not yet, at all events. An art cannot be raised to the level of a pure effusion at the first step.”

Albert Gleizes (1881–1953) French painter

1910s, Du Cubisme (1912)

Art, Flowers, Nature

“The modern systems view, which flowered during World War II (though building on principles in the wind much earlier), has already borne its first fruits and is in danger of a superficial acceptance into the corpus of sociology by way of the incorporation of some of its now common vocabulary.”

Walter F. Buckley (1922–2006) American sociologist

Source: Sociology and modern systems theory (1967), p. vii.

War, World, Way, Flowers

“Sikander burnt all books the same wise as fire burns hay. All the scintillating works faced destruction in the same manner that lotus flowers face with the onset of frosty winter.”

Sikandar Butshikan

Srivara, Zaina Rajtarangini

Books, Flowers, Winter

“That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different it's course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for the moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”

Charles Dickens book Great Expectations

Source: Great Expectations (1860-1861), Ch. 9

Life, Imagination, Flowers, Thinking

“Among flower vases, the ware that is given the highest rank is old Iga, from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it commands the highest price. When old Iga has been dampened, its colors and its glow take on a beauty such as to awaken on afresh. Iga was fired at very high temperatures. The straw ash and the smoke from the fuel fell and flowed against the surface, and as the temperature dropped, became a sort of glaze. Because the colors were not fabricated but were rather the result of nature at work in the kiln, color patterns emerged in such varieties as to be called quirks and freaks of the kiln. The rough, austere, strong surfaces of old Iga take on a voluptuous glow when dampened. It breathes to the rhythm of the dew of the flowers.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)

Beauty, Color, Flowers, Nature

“The flowers you gave me are rotting
And still I refuse to throw them away”

Regina Spektor (1980) American singer-songwriter and pianist

The Flowers
Soviet Kitsch (2004)

Flowers

“I do not claim any ability to read God's mind. I am sure of only one thing. When we look at the glory of stars and galaxies in the sky and the glory of forests and flowers in the living world around us, it is evident that God loves diversity. Perhaps the universe is constructed according to a principle of maximum diversity.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

Progress In Religion (2000)

Love, God, World, Star

“The little boy went first day of school
He got some crayons and started to draw
He put colors all over the paper
For colors was what he saw
And the teacher said.. "What you doin' young man?"
"I'm paintin' flowers" he said
She said… "It's not the time for art young man
And anyway flowers are green and red
There's a time for everything young man
And a way it should be done
You've got to show concern for everyone else
For you're not the only one."”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Flowers are Red
Song lyrics, Living Room Suite (1978)

School, Art, Color, Way

“[From Reginald Clinton]: I do not believe that the heart is turned from the Creator by enjoying his works. Of what avail is the sweet breath of the rose, the morning song of the lark? The pleasure they impart is not matter of necessity, and yet we delight in both. The soul of the poet is as much His gift as the fragrance of the flower, or the lay of the bird; and the page where inspired words record heroic deed, touching sorrow, or natural loveliness, is one of those pleasures for which we should be thankful. I, for my part, believe most devoutly in the Almighty mercy, when I see how much that is beautiful and gladdening has been scattered over our pilgrimage here.”

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

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Pleasure, Beauty, Soul, Flowers

“Eternity has no gray hairs! The flowers fade, the heart withers, man grows old and dies, the world lies down in the sepulchre of ages, but time writes no wrinkles on the brow of Eternity.”

Reginald Heber (1783–1826) English clergyman

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 213.

Age, World, Flowers, Time

“Even flowers, to exhale their perfume, must die a little.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Hasta las flores, para emanar sus perfumes, han menester morirse un poco.
Voces (1943)

Flowers

“There had been a war fought and won and the great city of the conquering people was crossed with triumphal arches and vivid with thrown flowers of white, red, and rose.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book May Day

"May Day"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

War, People, Flowers

“If a few people who have come together for the same purpose sit around a table, we can understand them as parallels making up a unity, like the petals of a flower. When we are happy we do not like to hear a discordant voice that disturbs our joy. Proverbially, it is said: Birds of a feather flock together. In all these examples parallelism, or the principle of repetition, can be pointed out. And this parallelism of experience is, in expression, translated into the formal parallelism which we have already discussed.”

Ferdinand Hodler (1853–1918) Swiss artist

from: Die Kunst Ferdinand Hodlers, 1923

People, Flowers, Understanding, Bird

“After a volcano has erupted our landscape is filled with silence. A moment ago it was on fire, now the rapid ashes are warming our feet. a moment ago it was dazzlingly light, now it is blessed twilight, kind to our eyes. All is at rest. The volcano is asleep, even our poor nerves are asleep. We are not happy, but we have a momentary peace. A moment ago we have seen the desert of our life in all its appalling vastness, now we see that the desert is in flower. The oases are few are afar between, but they do exist; we know that the desert is vast, but we also know that in the biggest deserts are the most oases. To gain this knowledge we must pay dearly, and an eruption is the price; it is high; but there is no lower one. That is why we should bless the volcanoes, thank them because their glare is so strong and their first so hot. Thank them for having dazzled us, for only then do we acquired our full sight; thank them, too, for having burnt us, for only as burnt children can we warm each other.But moments of peace are short. All other moments are much longer, and to know this is also wisdom. But because they are so short we must life in those moments as thought it were only then we lived. They knew this too.”

Stig Dagerman book A Burnt Child

Source: A Burnt Child (1948), p. 263

Life, Wisdom, Children, Peace

“6126. April-showers
Bring May-flowers.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Flowers

“I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers:
Of April, May, of June, and July flowers.
I sing of Maypoles, Hock-carts, wassails, wakes,
Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes.”

Robert Herrick book Hesperides

"Argument of His Book".
Hesperides (1648)

Flowers, Bird, Singing

“The light would reach us more quickly in the morning and fade more slowly at night if the whole earth were divided into vast flower beds that called forth the light at dawn and clutched it longer at nightfall. Nature instituted summer for flowers long before man took summer over for his own uses.”

Malcolm de Chazal (1902–1981) Mauritian artist

Sens-plastique

Flowers, Nature, Light, Summer

“Fanatic secularism is as dangerous to the world as fanatic religion. Love is the heart of all religions; the theme of all classical works of art and literature; the song of all devotees. Scientists know only what love does, not what love is. Love is to human hearts what the sun is to flowers.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Love, World, Religion, Art

“The traditional approach is from the periphery inwards, and through time, practice and renunciation, gradually to come upon that inner flower, that inner beauty and love — in fact to do everything to make oneself narrow, petty and shoddy; peel off little by little; take time; tomorrow will do, next life will do — and when at last one comes to the centre one finds there is nothing there, because one's mind has been made incapable, dull and insensitive.
Having observed this process, one asks oneself, is there not a different approach altogether — that is, is it not possible to explode from the centre?”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

1960s, (1969)

Love, Life, Beauty, Flowers

“There is a flower, a snow-white flower,
Fragile as if a morning shower
Would end its being, and the earth
Forget to what it gave a birth;
And it looks innocent and pale,
Slight as the least force could avail
To pluck it from its bed, and yet
Its root in depth and strength is set.
The July sun, the autumn rain,
Beat on its slender stalk in vain;—
Around it spreads, despite of care,
Till the whole garden is its share;
And other plants must fade and fall
Beneath its deep and deadly thrall.
This is love's emblem; it is nurst
In all unconciousness at first,
Too slight, too fair, to wake distrust;
No sign how that an after hour
Will rue and weep its fatal power.”

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

Canto IV
The Troubadour (1825)

Love, Flowers, Birth, Autumn

“"Leicester," she cried, "is this thy love
That thou so oft hast sworn to me,
To leave me in this lonely grove,
Immured in shameful privity?"No more thou com'st with lover's speed,
Thy once beloved bride to see;
But be she alive, or be she dead,
I fear, stern Earl, 's the same to thee."Not so the usage I received
When happy in my father's hall;
No faithless husband then me grieved,
No chilling fears did me appall."I rose up with the cheerful morn,
No lark more blithe, no flower more gay;
And like the bird that haunts the thorn,
So merrily sung the livelong day."If that my beauty is but small,
Among court ladies all despised,
Why didst thou rend it from that hall,
Where, scornful Earl, it well was prized?"”

William Julius Mickle Cumnor Hall

Stanzas 3–7
Cumnor Hall (1784)

Love, Fear, Beauty, Flowers

“When in your last hour (think of this) all faculty in the broken spirit shall fade away, and sink into inanity — imagination, thought, effort, enjoyment — then will the flower of belief, which blossoms even in the night, remain to refresh you with its fragrance in the last darkness.”

Jean Paul (1763–1825) German novelist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 238.

Imagination, Flowers, Thinking, Effort

“Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears:
Yet, slower, yet; O faintly, gentle springs:
List to the heavy part the music bears,
Woe weeps out her division, when she sings.
Droop herbs, and flowers,
Fall grief in showers,
Our beauties are not ours;
O, I could still,
Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,
Drop, drop, drop, drop,
Since nature's pride is now, a withered daffodil.”

Ben Jonson Cynthia's Revels

Cynthia's Revels (1600), Act I, scene i

Beauty, Music, Spring, Flowers

“.. it [his watercolor 'New Flower' ['Het Bloempje', 1880] is one of those pictures, I did my best to finish it highly, as the story is nice and pleasant [where] other pictures may be more necessarily rough or strong being paint in an other mood. But this new flower needed a tender hand and conspicuous attention for details.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

Quote from his letter, 23 Nov 1906, to E.D. Libbey in Toledo (TMA); as cited in Jozef Israëls, 1824 – 1911, ed. Dieuwertje Dekkers; Waanders, Zwolle 1999, p. 306
E.D. Libbey was one of the initiators of the Toledo-museum; the watercolor was in his private collection till 1925
Quotes of Jozef Israels, after 1900

Flowers, Mood, Strong, Painting

“Splendid Things
Chinese brocade. A sword with a decorated scabbard. The grain of the wood in a Buddhist statue. Long flowering branches of beautifully coloured wistaria entwined about a pine tree.”

Sei Shonagon (966–1025) Japanese author and a court lady

Source: The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon (1002), p. 109

Flowers, Tree

“Yet it must be acknowledged that there is a fundamental difference between the sexual impulse in men and women. Her need is for a lover, a protector, a father for her children. His desire is for mastery, conquest, to be allowed to use her body for his own satisfaction. He feels like a bee, burying itself in a flower, apparently doing nothing for the flower but taking its sweetness. If he loves her, then his desire is mixed with a kind of pity.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

L'amour: The Ways of Love (1970)

Love, Women, Men, Children

“The United Nations is useless…and also harmful. It is a land that flowers demagoguery with a bunch of newborn countries, devoid of any tradition.”

António de Oliveira Salazar (1889–1970) Prime Minister of Portugal

Quoted in Memories of an unfinished war: Canada, the United States and the decolonization process in Angola, page 153; By Manuel Francisco Gomes; Collaborator Alberto João Jardim; Published by Edições Colibri, 2006, ISBN 9727725945, 9789727725946, 241 pages

Flowers, Country

“I have sought to determine… the different relations of bulk, subsisting between the various parts of his frame; and to ascertain how far these relations become modified during his development, what they are in the flower of his age, and in what position they remain up to the instant of decay.”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

Preface of M. Quetelet
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

Age, Flowers, Parting

“Call us not weeds, we are flowers of the Sea,
For lovely and bright and gay tinted are we,
And quite independent of sun's fire or showers-
Then call us not weeds! We are ocean's bright flowers,
Not nursed like the plants of a summer parterre,
Where gales are but sighs of an evening air,
Our exquisite, fragile and delicate forms
Are nursed by the Ocean and rocked by the Storms.”

Petar Beron

Historia naturalis bulgarica 4: 10 - 15.

Love, Flowers, Sun, Summer

“Ah! it is well we can forget,
Or who could linger on
Beneath a sky whose stars are set,
On earth whose flowers are gone?
For who could welcome loved ones near,
Thinking of those once far more dear”

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

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Love, Star, Flowers, Thinking

“The Philippines should be grateful to you if you would write a complete history of our country from an impartial point of view.. But don't expect thanks and laurels--crowns of flowers and laurels are the inventions of free people. But perhaps your children may gather the fruit of what the father planted.”

José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist

Letter to Blumentritt (13 April 1887)

Children, People, History, Flowers

“Love is the closest thing to laughter and the closest thing to tears. Love is the motive power of everything in the universe that has beauty in it. Love is the reason for everything and the reward for everything.
It’s always seemed strange to me that we have to use the word love for so many things. And yet when you come to think of it, that’s all right, too, because love is in everything in some form or another. Without it, I imagine the flowers would stop blooming and the sun would stop shining and people would stop laughing, and even the rain wouldn’t fall.
So love is always growth.
I think if I could have just one word for love—it would be understanding.
Love must always be unselfish, and strangely enough, love is the only thing in the world that ever is unselfish. And if it isn’t unselfish, it’s only a counterfeit of love.”

Harold Lloyd (1893–1971) American film actor and producer

"What is Love? Twelve Men of the Screen Give Their Ideas". Photoplay, February 1925, p. 36. (Photoplay Publishing Company). https://archive.org/stream/pho28chic#page/n163/mode/2up

Love, People, World, Beauty

“There grew ten thousand flowers, on whose leaves
Shone every hue that ever yet hath shone
In a king's diadem of Indian gems,
Or in the tints an autumn sunset throws
O'er the rich glaciers in the rainbow arch
Of the departing shower;”

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

The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Flowers, Autumn