Quotes about lily

A collection of quotes on the topic of lily, rose, herring, likeness.

Quotes about lily

Leonard Cohen photo
Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo
Johnny Depp photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Oscar Wilde photo

“Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray and Selected Stories

Francesca Lia Block photo
Claude Monet photo

“It took me a long time to understand my water lilies... I planted them for pleasure, and grew them without thinking of painting them.. You don't absorb a landscape in a day... And then, all of a sudden, I had the revelation of the enchantment of my pond. I took up my palette.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in Marc Elder, A Giverny, chez Claude Monet (1924); as quoted in: Vivian Russell (1998) Monet's Water Lilies: The Inspiration of a Floating World. p. 19
1920 - 1926

Fernando Pessoa photo

“I search and can't find myself. I belong in chrysanthemum time, sharp in calla lily elongations. God made my soul into an ornamental thing.”

Ibid., p. 140
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Busco-me e não me encontro. Pertenço a horas crisântemos, nítidas em alongamentos de jarros. Deus fez da minha alma uma coisa decorativa.

Robert Browning photo
Robert Browning photo

“The sprinkled isles,
Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea.”

Cleon.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Virginia Woolf photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo
John of the Cross photo

“All ceased and I abandoned myself, Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

I abandoned and forgot myself, laying my face on my Beloved; all things ceased; I went out from myself, leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.
Variant translation by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (1991)
Dark Night of the Soul
Context: I remained, lost in oblivion; My face I reclined on the Beloved.
All ceased and I abandoned myself, Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.

Manly P. Hall photo
Gail Carson Levine photo
Sylvia Plath photo
Christopher Moore photo
Katharine Hepburn photo
Gaston Leroux photo
John Keats photo
Oswald Chambers photo
Francesca Lia Block photo
Tom Robbins photo

“Because watching him love Tiger Lily was better than not watching him at all.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

David Levithan photo
Edith Wharton photo
Cornelia Funke photo
Sue Monk Kidd photo
Richelle Mead photo
John Ruskin photo

“Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Also misattributed to John Steinbeck.
Source: The Works of John Ruskin: The stones of Venice, v. 1-3

John Ruskin photo

“Remember that the most beautiful things in life are often the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.”

Volume I, chapter II, section 17.
The Stones of Venice (1853)
Variant: Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless.
Context: You were made for enjoyment, and the world was filled with things which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased with them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot turn to other account than mere delight. Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless: peacocks and lilies, for instance.

Edith Wharton photo
Louis De Bernières photo
Charlaine Harris photo
Thomas Haynes Bayly photo

“I'd be a butterfly born in a bower,
Where roses and lilies and violets meet.”

Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797–1839) English poet, songwriter, dramatist, and writer

I'd be a Butterfly, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

John Muir photo

“That memorable day died in purple and gold, and just as the last traces of the sunset faded in the west and the star-lilies filled the sky, the full moon looked down over the rim of the valley, and the great rocks, catching the silvery glow, came forth out of the dusky shadows like very spirits.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

" A Rival of the Yosemite: The Cañon of the South Fork of King's River, California http://books.google.com/books?id=fWoiAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA77" The Century Magazine, volume XLIII, number 1 (November 1891) pages 77-97 (at page 86)
1890s

Edmund Waller photo

“There is a garden in her face
Where roses and white lilies blow;
A heavenly paradise is that place,
Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow:
There cherries grow which none may buy
Till 'Cherry-ripe' themselves do cry.”

Edmund Waller (1606–1687) English poet and politician

Cherry-Ripe http://www.bartleby.com/101/168.html.
Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham (1857)

Christina Rossetti photo
Anne Morrow Lindbergh photo
Samuel Rutherford photo

“The good Husbandman may pluck His rose & gather in His lily.”

Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661) Scottish Reformed theologian

Letter 310 to Mistress Taylor's on her son's death
Letters of Samuel Rutherford (Andrew Bonar)

Julia Ward Howe photo

“In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.”

Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) American abolitionist, social activist, and poet

Published version, in the Atlantic Monthly (February 1862)
In the whiteness of the lilies he was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that shines out on you and me,
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
Our God is marching on.
First manuscript version (19 November 1861).
The Battle Hymn of the Republic (1861)

Kate Bush photo

“I said
"Lily, Oh Lily I'm so afraid
I fear I am walking in the Veil of Darkness"
And she said
"Child, take what I say
With a pinch of salt
And protect yourself with fire"”

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

Song lyrics, The Red Shoes (1993)

Carl Panzram photo
Julian of Norwich photo
John Gay photo

“Adieu, she cried, and waved her lily hand.”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

Sweet William's Farewell to Black-eyed Susan, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Nathalia Crane photo
Stéphane Mallarmé photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“And there the lovely Lily grew,
The summer's purest flower,
And many a tiny fairy knew
The shelter of its bower”

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

(7th June 1834) The History of the Lily
(25th October 1834) The Exile. See under Translations from the French
(1835) For Versions from the German, see under Translations from the German
The London Literary Gazette, 1833-1835

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Leslie Stuart photo
Henry Austin Dobson photo
Robert Graves photo
Stéphane Mallarmé photo
Elizabeth Drew Stoddard photo
Ingmar Bergman photo

“The demons are innumerable, arrive at the most inappropriate times and create panic and terror… but I have learned that if I can master the negative forces and harness them to my chariot, then they can work to my advantage…. Lilies often grow out of carcasses' arseholes.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

As quoted in "Bergman talks of his dreams and demons in rare interview" http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Exclusive/0,,617467,00.html by Xan Brooks The Guardian (12 December 2001).

Ludovico Ariosto photo

“For roses also blossom on the thorn,
And the fair lily springs from loathsome weed.”

Che de le spine ancor nascon le rose,
E d'una fetida erba nasce il giglio.
Canto XXVII, stanza 121 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

Gloria Estefan photo
Ben Jonson photo
Kent Hovind photo
Reginald Heber photo

“By cool Siloam's shady rill
How sweet the lily grows!”

Reginald Heber (1783–1826) English clergyman

"First Sunday After Epiphany", no. 2 (1812).
Hymns

H. G. Wells photo
Halldór Laxness photo

“Oh no, better to be silent. That is what the glacier does. That is what the lilies of the field do.”

Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

Margaret Junkin Preston photo

“Gracious as sunshine, sweet as dew
Shut in a lily's golden core.”

Margaret Junkin Preston (1820–1897) American writer

Agnes, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 458.

Thomas Holley Chivers photo
Lily Tomlin photo

“Interviewer: You once said you had a drug problem…
Lily: Yeah, I still do. It's so hard to find good grass these days.”

Lily Tomlin (1939) American actress, comedian, writer, and producer

Contributions of Jane Wagner

Francis Turner Palgrave photo
Roy Campbell (poet) photo

“Our spirits leaped, hosannas of destruction,
Like desert lilies forked with tongues of fire.”

Roy Campbell (poet) (1901–1957) South African poet

"To a Pet Cobra," lines 23-24
Sons of the Mistral (1926)

William Blake photo
Jane Wagner photo
Ben Jonson photo
Joan Baez photo
David Thomas (born 1813) photo
Yvonne De Carlo photo

“I think Yvonne De Carlo was more famous than Lily. But I gained the younger audience through The Munsters.”

Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) Canadian-American actress, dancer, and singer

And it was a steady job.
"Yvonne De Carlo Reminds The World There Was Life Before Lily Munster" (1987)

Torquato Tasso photo

“Armida smiles to hear, but keeps her gaze
fixed on herself, love's labours to behold.
Her locks she braided and their wanton ways
in lovely order marshalled and controlled.
She wound the curls of her fine strands with sprays
of flowers, like enamel worked on gold,
and made the stranger rose join with her pale
breast's native lily, and composed her veil.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Ride Armida a quel dir: ma non che cesse
Dal vagheggiarsi, o da' suoi bei lavori.
Poichè intrecciò le chiome, e che ripresse
Con ordin vago i lor lascivi errori,
Torse in anella i crin minuti, e in esse,
Quasi smalto su l'or, consparse i fiori:
E nel bel sen le peregrine rose
Giunse ai nativi giglj, e 'l vel compose.
Canto XVI, stanza 23 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Loreena McKennitt photo
Tracey Ullman photo
Ellsworth Kelly photo
Richard Russo photo
John Muir photo
Francis Turner Palgrave photo
Jerry Saltz photo
W. S. Gilbert photo
Dante Gabriel Rossetti photo

“The blessed damozel lean'd out
From the gold bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters still'd at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) English poet, illustrator, painter and translator

Stanza 1.
The Blessed Damozel http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/715.html (1850)

Li Bai photo
Paula Modersohn-Becker photo