QUOTATIONS ABOUT FLOWERS

Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made, and forgot to put a soul into.  ~Henry Beecher, Life Thoughts, 1858

Earth laughs in flowers.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Hamatreya"

I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.  ~Emma Goldman


People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.  ~Iris Murdoch, A Fairly Honourable Defeat


For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous.  Bricks to all greenhouses!  Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!  ~Edward Abbey

 

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Afternoon on a Hill"


The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.  ~Basho

To be overcome by the fragrance of flowers is a delectable form of defeat.  ~Beverly Nichols

Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844


A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.  ~Walt Whitman


'Tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes!
~William Wordsworth, "Lines Written in Early Spring," Lyrical Ballads, 1798


The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.  ~Tennessee Williams


Flowers are without hope.  Because hope is tomorrow and flowers have no tomorrow.  ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

Break open a cherry tree and there are no flowers, but the spring breeze brings forth myriad blossoms.  ~Ikkyu Sojun

Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.  ~Heinrich Heine, The Hartz Journey

Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare,
And left the flushed print in a poppy there.
~Francis Thompson, "The Poppy," 1891

How can one help shivering with delight when one's hot fingers close around the stem of a live flower, cool from the shade and stiff with newborn vigor!  ~Colette

Look at us, said the violets blooming at her feet, all last winter we slept in the seeming death but at the right time God awakened us, and here we are to comfort you.  ~Edward Payson Rod

Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity.  ~John Ruskin

Pluck not the wayside flower;
It is the traveler's dower.
~William Allingham

When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.  ~Chinese Proverb

Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals.  Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and the hollyhock.  ~Henry Ward Beecher, Star Papers: A Discourse of Flowers

Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.  ~Walt Whitman

The flower is the poetry of reproduction.  It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.  ~Jean Giraudoux

Why do people give each other flowers?  To celebrate various important occasions, they're killing living creatures?  Why restrict it to plants?  "Sweetheart, let's make up.  Have this deceased squirrel."  ~The Washington Post





Flowers whisper "Beauty!" to the world, even as they fade, wilt, fall.  ~Dr. SunWolf

Flowers are those little colorful beacons of the sun from which we get sunshine when dark, somber skies blanket our thoughts.  ~Dodinsky

Flowers don't worry about how the're going to bloom.  They just open up and turn toward the light and that makes them beautiful.  ~Jim Carrey

The poet's darling.  ~William Wordsworth, "To the Daisy"

The artist is the confidant of nature, flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms.  Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs towards him.  ~Auguste Rodin

The flower offered of itself
And eloquently spoke
Of Gods
In languages of rainbows
Perfumes
And secret silence...
~Phillip Pulfrey, from Love, Abstraction and other Speculations

Every flower is a soul blossoming in nature.  ~Gerard de Nerval

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords.  ~John Muir, A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, 1916

With daffodils mad footnotes for the spring,
And asters purple asterisks for autumn -
~Conrad Aiken, Preludes for Memnon, 1930