Quotes about rose
page 5

Aaro Hellaakoski photo

“When the early morning sun
first pierced the grayness in the sky,
a pickerel rose from his watery home
to climb a pine tree, singing.
And high in the branches, he looked upon
the morning's glowing beauty -
the wind-blown ripples on the lake,
dew-freshened flowers and fields below.”

Aaro Hellaakoski (1893–1952) Finnish writer, poet, geographer and teacher

Aaro Hellaakoski. "The song of the pike hauen laulu." Aina Swan Cutler (trans.) in: Aili Jarvenpa, ‎Michael G. Karni (1989), Sampo, the magic mill: a collection of Finnish-American writing.

“The final dive of the ship, as the bow lay submerged and the stern rose out of the water, was truly horrendous for all who witnessed it.”

Steve Turner (1949) British writer

Source: The Band That Played On (Thomas Nelson, 2011), pp. 153-154

Robert Frost photo
Sei Shonagon photo
Marcus Aurelius photo
Robert Louis Stevenson photo
Andrew Dickson White photo
John Gray photo
Nikos Kazantzakis photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Hast thou named all the birds without a gun;
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Forbearance http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/forebearance.htm
1840s, Poems (1847)

Robert Andrews Millikan photo

“I'll go where secrets are sold
Where roses unfold
I'll sleep as time goes by”

Katy Rose (1987) American singer

Lemon
Because I Can

Stephen Crane photo
Frederick Goddard Tuckerman photo
Benjamin Constant photo

“I am not the rose, but I have lived near the rose.”

Benjamin Constant (1767–1830) Swiss-born French politician, writer on politics and religion

Je ne suis pas la rose, mais j’ai vécu avec elle.
A. Hayward, Autobiography and Letters of Mrs. Piozzi, Introduction.

Aldo Capitini photo

“And you mother still close to me,
you know that it is not enough to live an ordered and honest life.
You have been faithful for years to bring order into our house.
As soon as the dawn appeared in the night sky,
you rose towards the tasks awaiting you –
in the silence of a mental prayer.
Perhaps it is not enough even the overwhelming love,
to which you gave the sober expression of concrete acts.
The sacred wool, the steaming milk and the bed
composed with inimitable care by your hands.
Going back in time you recounted to your children their births,
and the birthdays have slowly vanished.
The beginning is now found from a thousand beginnings,
with the ancient, with the unknown, with Christ.
A present act includes them all,
opening after the events have passed.
And there is a severe duty for struggle,
something in our own life could be wrenched away by it.
The guards will soon appear,
and they will take me to my cell with the high window.
You will still be with me,
as mother and inexhaustible human presence.
Giving freely of your love, you still knew that your son is freedom.
You were a nearness, that always found something to do.
I have watched you unflinching under hardness and spite,
always moving, and acting,
holding back your inner rebellion you had pity on rage.
Now we are together to work and open all around.
In the loving gift to the world which ever crucifies us
is our fulfilment.
Seeing its limitations, still to treasure everything
is the gesture of infinite miracle,
and you were right: order comes from this principle,
the earthly goods, as our brothers the prophets tell us,
will be given unto us.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist
Torquato Tasso photo

“The purple morning left her crimson bed,
And donned her robes of pure vermilion hue,
Her amber locks she crowned with roses red,
In Eden's flowery gardens gathered new.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Già l'aura messaggiera erasi desta
A nunziar che se ne vien l'aurora:
intanto s'adorna, e l'aurea testa
Di rose, colte in Paradiso, infiora.
Canto III, stanza 1 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Gabrielle Roy photo
Joaquin Miller photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Anne Morrow Lindbergh photo
Alauddin Khalji photo
Orson Pratt photo

“By and by an obscure individual, a young man, rose up, and, in the midst of all Christendom, proclaimed the startling news that God had sent an angel to him; that through his faith, prayers, and sincere repentance he had beheld a supernatural vision, that he had seen a pillar of fire descend from Heaven, and saw two glorious personages clothed upon with this pillar of fire, whose countenance shone like the sun at noonday; that he heard one of these personages say, pointing to the other, 'This is my beloved Son, hear ye him.' This occurred before this young man was fifteen years of age; and it was a startling announcement to make in the midst of a generation so completely given up to the traditions of their fathers; and when this was proclaimed by this young, unlettered boy to the priests and the religious societies in the State of New York, they laughed him to scorn. 'What!' said they, "visions and revelations in our day! God speaking to men in our day!" They looked upon him as deluded; they pointed the finger of scorn at him and warned their congregations against him. 'The canon of Scripture is closed up; no more communications are to be expected from Heaven. The ancients saw heavenly visions and personages; they heard the voice of the Lord; they were inspired by the Holy Ghost to receive revelations, but behold no such thing is to be given to man in our day, neither has there been for many generations past.'”

Orson Pratt (1811–1881) Apostle of the LDS Church

This was the style of the remarks made by religionists forty years ago. This young man, some four years afterwards, was visited again by a holy angel.
Journal of Discourses 13:65-66 (December 19, 1869).
Joseph Smith Jr.'s First Vision

“They darted down and rose up like a wave
Or buzzed impetuously as before;
One would have thought the corpse was held a slave
To living by the life it bore!”

Allen Tate (1899–1979) American poet, essayist and social commentator

A Carrion, from Poems (1961).

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Johnny Mercer photo

“The days of wine and roses laugh and run away like a child at play
Through the meadow land toward a closing door
A door marked "nevermore" that wasn't there before”

Johnny Mercer (1909–1976) American lyricist, songwriter, singer and music professional

Song The Days of Wine and Roses

Kate Bush photo

“This little girl inside me
Is retreating to her favourite place.
Go into the garden.
Go under the ivy,
Under the leaves,
Away from the party.
Go right to the rose.
Go right to the white rose
(For me.)”

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

Song lyrics, Singles and rarities

Louis Bromfield photo
Thaddeus Stevens photo

“I will be satisfied if my epitaph shall be written thus: "Here lies one who never rose to any eminence, who only courted the low ambition to have it said that he striven to ameliorate the condition of the poor, the lowly, the downtrodden of every race and language and color."”

Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868) American politician

Speech (13 January 1865), as quoted in History of the Antislavery Measures of the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth Congress (1865) by Henry Wilson, p. 388
1860s

Joseph Smith, Jr. photo
John Wallis photo
Conrad Aiken photo
Edward FitzGerald photo

“Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say;
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?”

Edward FitzGerald (1809–1883) English poet and writer

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Evelyn Waugh photo

“No.3 Commando was very anxious to be chums with Lord Glasgow, so they offered to blow up an old tree stump for him and he was very grateful and said don't spoil the plantation of young trees near it because that is the apple of my eye and they said no of course not we can blow a tree down so it falls on a sixpence and Lord Glasgow said goodness you are clever and he asked them all to luncheon for the great explosion.
So Col. Durnford-Slater DSO said to his subaltern, have you put enough explosive in the tree?. Yes, sir, 75lbs. Is that enough? Yes sir I worked it out by mathematics it is exactly right. Well better put a bit more. Very good sir.
And when Col. D Slater DSO had had his port he sent for the subaltern and said subaltern better put a bit more explosive in that tree. I don't want to disappoint Lord Glasgow. Very good sir.
Then they all went out to see the explosion and Col. DS DSO said you will see that tree fall flat at just the angle where it will hurt no young trees and Lord Glasgow said goodness you are clever.
So soon they lit the fuse and waited for the explosion and presently the tree, instead of falling quietly sideways, rose 50 feet into the air taking with it ½ acre of soil and the whole young plantation.
And the subaltern said Sir, I made a mistake, it should have been 7½ not 75. Lord Glasgow was so upset he walked in dead silence back to his castle and when they came to the turn of the drive in sight of his castle what should they find but that every pane of glass in the building was broken.
So Lord Glasgow gave a little cry and ran to hide his emotions in the lavatory and there when he pulled the plug the entire ceiling, loosened by the explosion, fell on his head.
This is quite true.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Letter to his wife (31 May 1942)

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)

Jack Benny photo

“Bob: Welcome to the Lucky Strike Program. In just a few minutes, you'll see our star, Gypsy Rose Benny.”

Jack Benny (1894–1974) comedian, vaudeville performer, and radio, television, and film actor

The Jack Benny Program (Radio: 1932-1955), The Jack Benny Program (Television: 1950-1965)

James K. Morrow photo
Vladimir Putin photo

“It's extremely dangerous trying to resolve political problems outside the framework of the law — first the ‘Rose Revolution', then they'll think up something like blue. [word play here: "rose" having the colloquial sense of "lesbian" in modern Russian, and "blue" meaning "gay"]”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

On the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine and the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia, News conference http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/russia/article405454.ece, (23 December 2004).
On Ukraine

Susan Cooper photo
Aron Ra photo

“There are so many people who tell me, “if I had a time machine and could prove that Jesus never rose from the dead”, with the admission that “I hope my faith and I are strong enough that I can keep on believing, even when my eyes tell me otherwise.” That’s make-believe! That’s lying to yourself. That’s the entirety of what religion is.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Exclusive Interview with Aron Ra – Public Speaker, Atheist Vlogger, and Activist https://conatusnews.com/interview-aron-ra-past-president-atheist-alliance-america/, Conatus News (May 17, 2017)

Mark Twain photo

“If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvellous fight in the world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”

Concerning the Jews (Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1899)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Wouldst thou know what life should be?
Were it mine but to decree
What its path should be for Thee?
Look upon those sister powers,
Chained, but only chained with flowers, —
That bright group of rose-winged Hours”

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

(3rd May 1823) Poetical Catalogue of Paintings - The Hours, by Howard.
The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Leszek Kolakowski photo
Sylvia Plath photo
Richard Harris Barham photo
Ben Hecht photo
Walter Benjamin photo

“You follow the same paths of thought as before. Only, they appear strewn with roses.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Man geht immer die gleichen Wege des Denkens wie vorher. Nur scheinen sie mit Rosen bestreut.
"Main features of my first impression of hashish" (18 December 1927), On Hashish (2006), p. 22
Main features of my first impression of hashish (1927)

Walter Scott photo

“Randolph, thy wreath has lost a rose.”

Canto VI, stanza 18.
The Lord of the Isles (1815)

Andrew Motion photo

“By day the appalling loose beauty
of prowling floes:
lions’ heads, dragons, crucifix-wrecks,
and a thing like a blown rose.”

Andrew Motion (1952) poet, novelist and biographer from England

Poem "Ice"
Poetry Quotes

Matthew Arnold photo

“Strew on her roses, roses,
And never a spray of yew.
In quiet she reposes:
Ah! would that I did too.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

"Requiescat" (1853), st. 1

Gabrielle Roy photo
Thomas Brooks photo

“God's very service is wages; His ways are strewed with roses, and paved with joy that is unspeakable and full of glory, and with peace that passeth understanding.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Source: Quotes from secondary sources, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, 1895, P. 127.

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey photo
Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma photo
Bernice King photo

“…the American's upper yards and punctured sails rose above the fog of gunfire like a cliff.”

Douglas Reeman (1924–2017) British author

For My Country's Freedom, Cap 11 "Like Father, Like Son"

Samuel R. Delany photo
Marcel Duchamp photo
David Brin photo
Sri Aurobindo photo
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis photo
Thomas Browne photo

“When we desire to confine our words, we commonly say they are spoken under the rose.”

Thomas Browne (1605–1682) English polymath

Pseudodoxia Epidemica Book 5, Ch. 22, sect. 6

“Hasan Nizami writes that after the suppression of a Hindu revolt at Kol (Aligarh) in 1193 AD, Aibak raised “three bastions as high as heaven with their heads, and their carcases became food for beasts of prey. The tract was freed from idols and idol-worship and the foundations of infidelism were destroyed.” In 1194 AD Aibak destroyed 27 Hindu temples at Delhi and built the Quwwat-ul-Islãm mosque with their debris. According to Nizami, Aibak “adorned it with the stones and gold obtained from the temples which had been demolished by elephants”. In 1195 AD the Mher tribe of Ajmer rose in revolt, and the Chaulukyas of Gujarat came to their assistance. Aibak had to invite re-inforcements from Ghazni before he could meet the challenge. In 1196 AD he advanced against Anahilwar Patan, the capital of Gujarat. Nizami writes that after Raja Karan was defeated and forced to flee, “fifty thousand infidels were despatched to hell by the sword” and “more than twenty thousand slaves, and cattle beyond all calculation fell into the hands of the victors”. The city was sacked, its temples demolished, and its palaces plundered. On his return to Ajmer, Aibak destroyed the Sanskrit College of Visaladeva, and laid the foundations of a mosque which came to be known as ADhãî Din kã JhoMpaDã. Conquest of Kalinjar in 1202 AD was Aibak’s crowning achievement. Nizami concludes: “The temples were converted into mosques… Fifty thousand men came under the collar of slavery and the plain became black as pitch with Hindus.””

Hasan Nizami Persian language poet and historian

Hasan Nizami, quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India. ISBN 9788185990231 Ch. 6

Nathalia Crane photo

“The rose has told In one simplicity.
That never life
Relinquishes a bloom
But to bestow
An ancient confidence.”

Nathalia Crane (1913–1998) American writer

"Tadmore"
Venus Invisible and Other Poems (1928)

John Muir photo

“One shining morning, at the head of the Pacheco Pass, a landscape was displayed that after all my wanderings still appears as the most divinely beautiful and sublime I have ever beheld. There at my feet lay the great central plain of California, level as a lake thirty or forty miles wide, four hundred long, one rich furred bed of golden Compositae. And along the eastern shore of this lake of gold rose the mighty Sierra, miles in height, in massive, tranquil grandeur, so gloriously colored and so radiant that it seemed not clothed with light, but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city. Along the top, and extending a good way down, was a rich pearl-gray belt of snow; then a belt of blue and dark purple, marking the extension of the forests; and stretching along the base of the range a broad belt of rose-purple, where lay the miners' gold and the open foothill gardens — all the colors smoothly blending, making a wall of light clear as crystal and ineffably fine, yet firm as adamant. Then it seemed to me the Sierra should be called, not the Nevada or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten years in the midst of it, rejoicing and wondering, seeing the glorious floods of light that fill it, — the sunbursts of morning among the mountain-peaks, the broad noonday radiance on the crystal rocks, the flush of the alpenglow, and the thousand dashing waterfalls with their marvelous abundance of irised spray, — it still seems to me a range of light.”

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

" The Treasures of the Yosemite http://books.google.com/books?id=ZzWgAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA483", The Century Magazine, volume XL, number 4 (August 1890) pages 483-500 (at page 483)
1890s

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Nathalia Crane photo
St. Vincent (musician) photo
Seal (musician) photo
Elizabeth Barrett Browning photo
Farrokh Tamimi photo
Henry Adams photo
Colin Wilson photo
Walter de la Mare photo

“Oh, no man knows
Through what wild centuries
Roves back the rose.”

Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) English poet and fiction writer

All That's Past.

Calvin Coolidge photo
Caspar David Friedrich photo

“Alas, the blue arc of heaven / Is covered with gloomy clouds, / And the bright radiance of the sun / Is completely hidden
See the terrifying force of the tempest / Bows the oaks so that is groans, / And the rose on the beautiful pasture / has ben bent down by the rain.”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

some poetry lines of Friedrich, c. 1807-09; as cited by C. D. Eberlein in C. D. Friedrich Bekenntnisse, p 57; as quoted and translated by Linda Siegel in Caspar David Friedrich and the Age of German Romanticism, Boston Branden Press Publishers, 1978, p. 52
1794 - 1840

Algernon Charles Swinburne photo

“The thorns he spares when the rose is taken;
The rocks are left when he wastes the plain;
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,
These remain.”

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic

A forsaken Garden.
Undated

Elizabeth Barrett Browning photo
Stéphane Mallarmé photo

“All alone I gave
Myself for triumph the ideal sin of roses.”

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) French Symbolist poet

The Afternoon of a Faun (1876)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Then rose those deadlier sounds that tell
When foes meet hand to hand,—
The shout, the yell, the iron clang
Of meeting spear and brand.”

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

The Golden Violet - The Falcon
The Golden Violet (1827)

Richard Rodríguez photo
Thomas Haynes Bayly photo

“She wore a wreath of roses
The first night that we met.”

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

She wore a Wreath, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Henry David Thoreau photo

“Truths and roses have thorns about them.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

This is commonly misattributed because Thoreau wrote it in his journal June 14, 1838, but it was not original. This was a popular aphorism in his day, appearing in several collections of proverbs during his lifetime. Its origin is unknown, but it had appeared in print before his birth. E.g., in Joseph Dennie and Asbury Dickins, The Port Folio, vol.2, no.1 (July 1809) http://books.google.com/books?id=YrIRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA431, p. 431; and in Felipe Fernandez, Exercises on the rules of construction of the Spanish language http://books.google.com/books?id=LMIBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA228, 3rd ed. (1811), p. 228.
Misattributed

Umberto Eco photo

“I started to write [The Name of the Rose] in March of 1978, moved by a seminal idea. I wanted to poison a monk.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

Quoted in Myriem Bouzaher's introduction to the French version of The Name of the Rose, Postille al Nome della Rosa, Page 18 (1985)

Dylan Thomas photo

“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

" The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower http://www.internal.org/view_poem.phtml?poemID=266" (1934), st. 1

Antoine-Vincent Arnault photo

“I go where all nature goes,
Where goes the leaf of the rose,
And eke the leaf of the bay.”

Antoine-Vincent Arnault (1766–1834) French dramatist

Volume V., 16. — ""La Feuille"".
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 82.
Fables (1802)

Cecil Day Lewis photo
Thomas Browne photo
Amir Taheri photo
Thom Yorke photo
John Fante photo