Quotes about rose

A collection of quotes on the topic of rose, likeness, love, time.

Quotes about rose

“Suddenly, as the sun rose, the poem flew without an owner, while he faded away like a fiction called a “story.””

José Baroja book Un hijo de perra y otros cuentos

“I like roses best. But they bloom in all four seasons. I wonder if people who like roses best have to die four times over again.”

Osamu Dazai book The Setting Sun

Source: The Setting Sun

People, Time, Season

“Life is painful. It has thorns, like the stem of a rose. Culture and art are the roses that bloom on the stem. The flower is yourself, your humanity. Art is the liberation of the humanity inside yourself.”

Daisaku Ikeda (1928) Japanese writer

Life, Pain, Art, Flowers

“Marlon Brando is not a gangster-actor, he's an actor. Axl Rose and them are not gangster rock-and-rollers, they're rock-and-rollers right. So I'm a rapper, this is what I do. I'm an artist.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, MTV interview with Tabitha Soren (1995)

“I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Tree, Night

“Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete proving nature's laws wrong it learned 2 walk
without having feet”

Tupac Shakur book The Rose That Grew from Concrete

Source: The Rose That Grew from Concrete

Law, Nature, Learning

“I would regard meanings given by others so far as refreshing boon,
I would still be enamored of rose or any heartless flower's smell
if tender tides of your affection had not suffused
the pollen of my heart with loving aroma.”

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

You are, as You are https://allpoetry.com/poem/11313676-You-are--as-You-are--by-Suman-Pokhrel/ From Poetry

Love, Flowers, Heart

“the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Source: Selected Poems

“Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature's laws wrong, it learned to walk without having feet. Funny, it seems to by keeping it's dreams; it learned to breathe fresh air. Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared.”

Tupac Shakur book The Rose That Grew from Concrete

Source: The Rose That Grew from Concrete

Beauty, Law, Dreams, Nature

“in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why, remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if, remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me, remember me”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Dreams, Time, Forgetting

“Tell me, is the rose naked
or is that her only dress?

Why do trees conceal
the splendor of their roots?

Who hears the regrets
of the thieving automobile?

Is there anything in the world sadder
than a train standing in the rain?”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: The Book of Questions

World, Tree, Training

“Rose once told me about this poem she’d read. There was this line, ‘If your eyes weren’t open, you wouldn’t know the difference between dreaming and waking.’ You know what I’m afraid of? That someday, even with my eyes open, I still won’t know.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Dreams, Reading

“we wouldn't ask why a rose that grew from the concrete for having damaged petals, in turn, we would all celebrate its tenacity, we would all love its will to reach the sun, well, we are the roses, this is the concrete and these are my damaged petals, dont ask me why, thank god, and ask me how”

Tupac Shakur book The Rose That Grew from Concrete

Source: The Rose That Grew from Concrete

Love, God, Sun

“The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated into practice.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

Love, Flowers, Lovers, Sun

“It is time, love, to break off that sombre rose,
shut up the stars and bury the ash in the earth;
and, in the rising of the light, wake with those who awoke
or go on in the dream, reaching the other shore of the sea which has no other shore.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Es la hora, amor mío, de apartar esta rosa sombría,
cerrar las estrellas, enterrar la ceniza en la tierra:
y, en la insurrección de la luz, despertar con los que despertaron
o seguir en el sueño alcanzando la otra orilla del mar que no tiene otra orilla.
La Barcarola Termina (The Watersong Ends) (1967), trans. Anthony Kerrigan in Selected Poems by Pablo Neruda [Houghton Mifflin, 1990, ISBN 0-395-54418-1] (p. 500).

Love, Dreams, Star, Light

“She was such a beautiful, delicate apparition that she was on the verge of reciting a verse by Huidobro or Neruda right there, dedicated, by the way, to the little rose.”

José Baroja book Un hijo de perra y otros cuentos

Way, Beauty

“Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

World, Light, Childhood

“The Rose does not preen herself to catch my eye. She blooms because she blooms. A saint is a saint until he knows he is one.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Source: One Minute Wisdom

“It's like if you plant something in the concrete and if it grow and the rose petal got all kinda scratches and marks, you ain't gonna say "damn, look at all the scratches and marks on the rose that grew from the concrete.." you gonna be like "DAMN! a ROSE grew from the CONCRETE?”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

“Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work. 'The kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared' (Luther).”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

Life, God, People, Peace

“Wild roses are fairest, and nature a better gardener than art.”

Louisa May Alcott A Long Fatal Love Chase

Source: A Long Fatal Love Chase

Art, Nature

“But the picking out, the choosing. Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it. I saw you and made up my mind. My mind.”

Toni Morrison book Jazz

Source: Jazz

Love, Thinking

“Rocket ships
are exciting
but so are roses
on a birthday.”

Leonard Nimoy (1931–2015) American actor, film director, poet, musician and photographer

Source: Come Be With Me: A Collection of Poems

Birthday

“It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses, we must plant more roses.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Heartbreaking, Depressing, Sad

“Leave behind the passive dreaming of a rose-tinted future. The energy of happiness exists in living today with roots sunk firmly in reality's soil.”

Daisaku Ikeda (1928) Japanese writer

Dreams, Reality, Future, Happiness

“Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.”

Oscar Wilde book The Nightingale and the Rose

Source: The Nightingale and the Rose

Life, Men, Secret, Reading

“A soft Sea washed around the House
A Sea of Summer Air
And rose and fell the magic Planks
That sailed without a care —
For Captain was the Butterfly
For Helmsman was the Bee
And an entire universe
For the delighted crew.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Universe, Bee, Summer, Housing

“I mean that it is more natural for me to be wicked than virtuous, when I do a bad act, and I've done many, I never feel wither shame, remorse or fear, I sometimes wish it was not necessary as I don't like the trouble, but as for any moral sense of principle, I haven't a particle. Many people are like me as actions prove, but they are not so frank in owning it and insist on keeping up the humbug of virtue. You'll find that is true, Rose, when you know the world better.”

Louisa May Alcott A Long Fatal Love Chase

A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866)

People, World, Fear, Feeling

“Any nose
May ravage with impunity a rose.”

Robert Browning book Sordello

Book the Sixth
Sordello (1840)

“A great wind came forth, the clouds rose on high.
Now that my might rules all within the seas, I have returned to my old village.
Where will I find brave men to guard the four corners of my land?”

Emperor Gaozu of Han (-256–-195 BC) founding emperor of the Han Dynasty (256 BC - 195 BC)

Translated by Burton Watson
大風歌 Song of the Great Wind

Men, Sea

“I had an incident with a really dumb magazine called Voici where they printed a photograph of Lily-Rose, a long-lens shot from very far away, and I just went ballistic. You can sue them — I've sued a couple of times, Vanessa's sued and we win every time — but this time I was beyond suing. I just wanted to beat whoever was responsible into the earth — I just wanted to rip him apart.So I tracked him down and gave him a few suggestions about how to live life and stay healthy and he took my advice. Because that's just unacceptable. They can do anything they want to me — and most tabloids have — but not my kid, not my pure, innocent little baby. She didn't ask to be in this circus.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Quoted in Jessamy Calkin, "Johnny Depp Esq.," http://www.johnnydeppfan.com/interviews/ukesquire.htm Esquire [U.K. edition] (February 2000)

Life, Time, Baby

“Then I rose, wiping the blunts ash from my clothes
then froze only to blow the herb smoke through my nose
and told my little man that i'm a go cyprose
there's some jewels in the skull that he can sell if he chose
words of wisdom from nas try to rise up above”

Nas (1973) American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur

One Love
On Albums, Illmatic (1994)

Wisdom, Clothes

“I smell like vitamin C, rose-oil and old smelly socks.”

Flea (musician) (1962) American musician

Quoted from the 'Off The Map' Dvd (2001)

“Because of you, each day is a melon slice
smelling sweetly of earth
Because of you, all fruits reach out to me
as if I were the sun.
Thanks to you, I live on the honey of hope.
You are the reason my heart beats.
Because of you, even my loneliest nights
smile like an Anatolian kilim on your wall.
Should my journey end before I reach my city,
I've rested in a rose garden thanks to you.
Because of you I don't let death enter,
clothed in the softest garments,
and knocking on my door with songs
calling me to the greatest place.”

Nâzım Hikmet (1902–1963) Turkish poet

From Because of You (29 August 1960)

Death, Smile, Hope, Sun

“The rose is fairest when 't is budding new,
And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears.
The rose is sweetest wash'd with morning dew,
And love is loveliest when embalm'd in tears.”

Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet

Canto IV, stanza 1. The Lady of the Lake http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3011 (1810)

Love, Fear, Hope, Tear

“Hitler and Mussolini rose to power in their own countries very largely because they could grasp this fact and their opponents could not.”

George Orwell book England Your England

The Lion and the Unicorn (1941), Part I: England Your England
"The Lion and the Unicorn" (1941)
Context: One cannot see the modern world as it is unless one recognizes the overwhelming strength of patriotism, national loyalty. In certain circumstances it can break down, at certain levels of civilization it does not exist, but as a positive force there is nothing to set beside it. Christianity and international Socialism are as weak as straw in comparison with it. Hitler and Mussolini rose to power in their own countries very largely because they could grasp this fact and their opponents could not.

Country

“On the grave of this poor stranger, let there be neither lamp nor rose,
Let neither butterfly's wing burn nor nightingale sing.”

Nur Jahan (1577–1645) Padshah Begum of the Mughal Empire

epitaph on Nur Jahan's tomb, translated by Wheeler Thackston, quoted in "Nur Jahan", p. 275

Singing

“Instead of saying that “the sun rises from East”, we can easily replace the sun with Christianity. It rose from the East and set in the West.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Sun

“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.”

William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream

Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream

“Nobody knew my rose of the world but me… I had too much glory. They don't want glory like that in nobody's heart”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

World, Heart

“I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window.… Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Speak, Memory

Source: Speak, Memory

Change

“The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Quote from Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp (1987) by Pierre Cabanne
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1981 - 1989

“What's in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Juliet, Act II, scene ii.
Variant: A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
Source: Romeo and Juliet (1595)

“Women Are Not Roses

Women have no
beginning
only continual
flows.

Though rivers flow
women are not
rivers.

Women are not
roses
they are not oceans
or stars.

i would like to tell
her this but
i think she
already knows.”

Ana Castillo (1953) novelist, poet, essayist, short story writer

Source: Women Are Not Roses

Women, Star, Thinking

“How pale the Princess is! Never have I seen her so pale. She is like the shadow of a white rose in a mirror of silver.”

Oscar Wilde Salome

Source: Salomé

Princess

“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

War, Time

“Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.”

Toni Morrison book Jazz

Source: Jazz

Relationship, Romantic, Love, Thinking

“Roses are red, violets are blue, I have five fingers, the middle one is for you.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Variant: Roses are red
Violets are blue
Be very afraid
We're coming for you.
Source: The Queen of Zombie Hearts

“… throw roses into the abyss and say: 'here is my thanks to the monster who didn't succeed in swallowing me alive.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“She rose and followed her bust from the room.”

Margery Allingham (1904–1966) English writer of detective fiction

“Let him only see the thorns who has eyes to see the rose.”

Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds

Source: Stray Birds

“The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Flowers, Tree, Light, Summer

“The sun rose slowly, as if it wasn't sure it was worth all the effort.”

Terry Pratchett book The Light Fantastic

Source: The Light Fantastic

Effort, Sun

“She is our moon. Our tidal pull. She is the rich deep beneath the sea, the buried treasure, the expression in the owl's eye, the perfume in the wild rose. She is what the water says when it moves.”

Patricia A. McKillip Solstice Wood

Source: Solstice Wood

Water, Sea

“There is darkness in light, there is pain in joy, and there are thorns on the rose.”

Cate Tiernan (1961) American novelist

Pain, Light, Joy

“For while directly we say that it [the length of human life] is ages long, we are reminded that it is briefer than the fall of a rose leaf to the ground.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

Life, Age

“That afternoon my mother had brought me the roses.
"Save them for my funeral," I'd said.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

“Happiness is in the quiet, ordinary things. A table, a chair, a book with a paper-knife stuck between the pages. And the petal falling from the rose, and the light flickering as we sit silent.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

Books, Light, Happiness

“Today in my heart
a vague trembling of stars
and all roses are
as white as my pain.”

Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director

Pain, Star, Heart

“Life is full of paradoxes, as roses are of thorns.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Life

“Okay, well, let's do a little reenactment. I'm the gay-looking DiCaprio and you're Rose. You have to keep your eyes open and on my face, or you'll have to let me go and I'll turn into a huge gay Popsicle.”

P. C. Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

“And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days…”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

Source: Collected Poems

Birthday, Autumn

“Saepe creat molles aspera spina rosas" - "Often the prickly thorn produces tender roses”

Ovid (-43–17 BC) Roman poet

“Every day in the United States, seventeen children are killed by gunfire. That’s about 6,000 children each year who are killed by guns, as compared, for example, with about 3,000 a year who died at the height of the polio epidemic of the 1950s. We rose up as a society to fight against polio. Why do we not act more forcefully to halt today’s even greater scourge?”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Source: Sources of Strength: Meditations on Scripture for a Living Faith

Children, Fight

“Someday you will name me,
then gently place those burning
holy roses in my hair.

[Songs of Longing]”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Source: Rainer Maria Rilke - Sämtliche Werke (Complete Works)

“Rose, oh pure contradiction, desire,
To be no one's sleep under so many
Lids.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust,
Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel
Lidern.
Rilke wrote his own epitaph sometime before October 27, 1925. He requested that it be inscribed on his gravestone. This was fifteen months before his death. (Translation: John J.L.Mood)
Source: The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

Sleep

“I always love it whenever Rose delivers one of her witty one-liners—particularly when it’s a completely serious situation. The contrast always amuses me, but then, I’m biased.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Love

“No mistake about it. Ice is cold; roses are red; I'm in love. And this love is about to carry me off somewhere. The current's too overpowering; I don't have any choice. It may very well be a special place, some place I've never seen before. Danger may be lurking there, something that may end up wounding me deeply, fatally. I might end up losing everything. But there's no turning back. I can only go with the flow. Even if it means I'll be burned up, gone forever.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Love

“I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: "No good in a bed, but fine against a wall."”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

From a speech given at the White Shrine Club, Fresno, California, quoted in The Event Makers I’ve Known (2012) by Elvin C. Bell, p. 161. She is described as being in her late 70s, so c. 1960–1962

Reading

“That which God said to the rose,
and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty,
He said to my heart,
and made it a hundred times more beautiful.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

III, 4129
Jewels of Remembrance (1996)

God, Beauty, Time, Heart

“I say it speeds thee not
That Christ rose from the grave,
So long as thou art still
To death and sin a slave.”

Angelus Silesius (1624–1677) German writer

The Cherubinic Wanderer

Death, Art, Christ, Speed

“Of course it's tempting to close one's eyes to history, and instead speculate about the roots of war in some possible animal instinct: as if, like the tiger, we still had to kill to live, or, like the robin redbreast, to defend a nesting territory. But war, organized war, is not a human instinct. It is a highly planned and cooperative form of theft. And that form of theft began 10,000 years ago when the harvesters of wheat accumulated a surplus and the nomads rose out of the desert to rob them of what they themselves could not provide. The evidence for that, we saw, in the walled city of Jericho and its prehistoric tower… That is the beginning of war.”

Jacob Bronowski The Ascent of Man

Episode 2: "The Harvest of the Seasons"
The Ascent of Man (1973)

War, History, Animals

“The rose is without 'why'; it blooms simply because it blooms. It pays no attention to itself, nor does it ask whether anyone sees it.”

Angelus Silesius book Cherubinischer Wandersmann

Die Ros ist ohn warum; sie blühet weil sie blühet, Sie acht nicht ihrer selbst, fragt nicht, ob man sie siehet.
Cherubinischer Wandersmann, Sämtliche Poetische Werke (1949), Vol. I

“Oh never star
Was lost here but it rose afar.”

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

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

Star

“"Teddy — I suppose Mummy and Daddy are real, aren't they?"
Teddy said, "You ask such silly questions, David. Nobody knows what 'real' really means. Let's go indoors."
"First I'm going to have another rose!" Plucking a bright pink flower, he carried it with him into the house. It could lie on the pillow as he went to sleep. Its beauty and softness reminded him of Mummy.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Super-Toys Last All Summer Long

Super-Toys Last All Summer Long (1969)

Lie, Beauty, Flowers, Question

“I wanna lay you down in a bed of roses”

Jon Bon Jovi (1962) American singer and musician

Music, Keep The Faith (1992)

“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.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

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.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)

People, Faith, Hope, Soul

“Roses are red
And ready for plucking
You're sixteen
And ready for high school.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions (1973)

School

“And the final event to himself has been, that, as he rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

On Edmund Burke's reactions to the American and French revolutions.
1790s, Letter to the Addressers (1792)

“Even in mathematics his whimsical fancy was sometimes suffered to peep out, and little girls who learnt the rudiments of calculation at his knee found the path they had imagined so thorny set about with roses by reason of the delightful fun with which he would turn a task into a joy. But when the fun was over the little girl would find that she had learnt the lesson (all unknowingly) just the same. Happy little girls who had such a master.”

Isa Bowman (1874–1958) British actress

Page 5.
The Story of Lewis Carroll (1899)

Imagination, Girl, Mathematics, Suffering

“I know love is eternal, so also are folly, lies and roses.”

Alice Borchardt book The Silver Wolf

In this world our hopes for the best are so often disappointed
Love is eternal. That is its terror and its final beauty. Love never ends. The joy may go out of it, and in time even the pain may end. But it lingers like a living thing and follows you every moment of your life.
The Silver Wolf

Love

“The Rose that Grew from Concrete”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

2000
Discography

“And if you should say that the shells were carried by the waves, being empty and dead, I say that where the dead went they were not far removed from the living; for in these mountains living ones are found, which are recognisable by the shells being in pairs; and they are in a layer where there are no dead ones; and a little higher up they are found, where they were thrown by the waves, all the dead ones with their shells separated, near to where the rivers fell into the sea, to a great depth; like the Arno which fell from the Gonfolina near to Monte Lupo, where it left a deposit of gravel which may still be seen, and which has agglomerated; and of stones of various districts, natures, and colours and hardness, making one single conglomerate. And a little beyond the sandstone conglomerate a tufa has been formed, where it turned towards Castel Florentino; farther on, the mud was deposited in which the shells lived, and which rose in layers according to the levels at which the turbid Arno flowed into that sea. And from time to time the bottom of the sea was raised, depositing these shells in layers, as may be seen in the cutting at Colle Gonzoli, laid open by the Arno which is wearing away the base of it; in which cutting the said layers of shells are very plainly to be seen in clay of a bluish colour, and various marine objects are found there. And if the earth of our hemisphere is indeed raised by so much higher than it used to be, it must have become by so much lighter by the waters which it lost through the rift between Gibraltar and Ceuta; and all the more the higher it rose, because the weight of the waters which were thus lost would be added to the earth in the other hemisphere. And if the shells had been carried by the muddy deluge they would have been mixed up, and separated from each other amidst the mud, and not in regular steps and layers — as we see them now in our time.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XVI Physical Geography

Mountain, Nature, Water, Time

“Why, what a wonderful piece of luck! Here is a red rose! I have never seen any rose like it in all my life. It is so beautiful that I am sure it has a long Latin name.”

Oscar Wilde book The Happy Prince and Other Tales

"The Nightingale and the Rose"
The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888)

Life, Beauty

“Words rose above the intolerably laden dumb oxen plodding through the mud. Words without meaning - wonderful words.”

Virginia Woolf book Between the Acts

Between the Acts (1941)

“The earth with yellow pears
And overgrown with roses wild
Upon the pond is bent,
And swans divine,
With kisses drunk
You drop your heads
In the sublimely sobering water.
But where, with winter come, am I
To find, alas, the floweres, and where
The sunshine
And the shadow of the world?
Cold the walls stand
And the wordless, in the wind
The weathercocks are rattling.”

Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843) German poet

"Halves of Life"

World, Flowers, Kiss, Water

“Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere — buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature. and there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.”

E.M. Forster book The Machine Stops

Source: The Machine Stops (1909), Ch. 1

World, Food, Music, Communication

“My problem in this situation is to know whether I should have blushed before or if l should be blushing now, I can recall having seen you blush once, When, When I touched the rose in your office, Women blush more easily than men, we're the weaker sex, Both sexes are weak, I was also blushing, How come you know so much about the weakness of the sexes, I know my own weakness, and something about the weakness of others.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

O meu problema, nesta situação, é saber se já deveria ter corado antes, ou se é agora que devo corar, Lembro-me de a ter visto corar uma vez, Quando, Quando toquei na rosa que estava no seu gabinete, As mulheres coram mais que os homens, somos o sexo frágil, Ambos os sexos são frágeis, eu também corei, Sabe assim tanto da fragilidade dos sexos, Sei da minha própria fragilidade, e alguma coisa da dos outros.
Source: The History of the Siege of Lisbon (1989), p. 219

Women, Men, Sex, Problem

“When I got home I mixed a stiff one and stood by the open window in the living room and sipped it and listened to the groundswell of traffic on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and looked at the glare of the big angry city hanging over the shoulder of the hills through which the boulevard had been cut. Far off the banshee wail of police or fire sirens rose and fell, never for very long completely silent. Twenty four hours a day somebody is running, somebody else is trying to catch him. Out there in the night of a thousand crimes, people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy tires. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered. People were hungry, sick; bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness. It all depends on where you sit and what your own private score is. I didn't have one. I didn't care. I finished the drink and went to bed.”

Raymond Chandler book The Long Goodbye

The Long Goodbye (1954)

People, Fear, Home, Drink

“I just stepped out of the dark, still forest and found myself on a rising hill. In front of me I saw a valley, surrounded by fertile hills, in which a town stood and the newly covered slate roof of the tower glowed in the evening light. Through the richly-flowered, carpeted meadow the river meandered... And behind the hills lay the mountains.... cliff after cliff rose far out into the horizon... Filled with soaring joy I stood there a long time and looked at the beautiful area..”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

Quote from Friedrich's Diary-note, 1803; as cited by C. D. Eberlein in C. D. Friedrich - Bekenntnisse, pp. 72-73; translated and quoted by Linda Siegel in Caspar David Friedrich and the Age of German Romanticism, Boston Branden Press Publishers, 1978, p. 45
1794 - 1840

Beauty, Mountain, Flowers, Light