Quotes about Flowers

Quotes 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


[F]lowers... adorn our lanes, fields and fells, and... smile upon us and cheer and bless us in our country rambles.... the lovely blossoms... kiss the clear brooks and mountain wells... ~James Rigg, "Preface," Wild Flower Lyrics and Other Poems, 1897


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


[T]he morning-glories on the wall
Fling out their purple trumpets to the wind,—
~Elizabeth Chase Akers Allen (1832–1911), "October," c.1866


'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, and as the human heart, imagining itself alone and unwatched, feels most deeply in the night-time, so seems it as if the flowers, in musing modesty, await the mantling eventide ere they give themselves up wholly to feeling, and breathe forth their sweetest odours. Flow forth, ye perfumes of my heart, and seek beyond these mountains the dear one of my dreams! ~Heinrich Heine, "The Hartz Journey" (1824), Pictures of Travel, translated from German by Charles Godfrey Leland, 1855


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 first wild-flower of the year is like land after sea. ~Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "April Days," first published 1861, quoted from the 1897 edition


Flawlessly, the weather continued. As it was with the garden, so it was with the meadows. The rhomboid fields below the Blandings house lay warped on the hills, and each was a bedazzling flung scarf of wildflowers. ~Eric Hodgins, Blandings' Way, 1950


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


God's grandest messages are not loudly self-assertive. His most fragrant flowers, unlike the hollyhocks and the sunflowers, do not challenge the attention of the careless wayfarer, but hide under the cool hedgerows and only betray themselves by their sweetness. Our dearest and deepest joys are not those which we have in the glare of publicity, but those which cluster round about us in the home. ~Alfred Rowland, "The Clouds: God's Angels of the Sea," in The Sunday Magazine(London), 1884


Flowers really do intoxicate me. ~Vita Sackville-West


The quality of scent or perfume is essential, and any flower that lacks perfume is far from perfect, no matter what other qualities it may possess. ~T.H. Cook, James Douglas, and J.F. McLeod, Carnations & Pinks, 1911


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


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


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


The lovely flowers embarrass me,
They make me regret I am not a bee –
~Emily Dickinson, 1864


And then the rose-border. What intensity in those odorous buds of the Bon Silene, making the very spirit bound as though a message had reached it from heaven. And the verbena bed is compassed with fitful fragrance. Even the pansies, with their dewy eyes, are ready to rival the violets now.... Nor must the purple buds of the calycanthus be forgotten. 'Sweet-scented shrub' indeed; for let me hide but a single one of these in some fold of my dress, and the spices of Araby will float around me till the evening. ~Sarah Smiley


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, www.originals.net


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, 1867 October 19th, A Thousand-Mile Walk To the Gulf


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


Next to the rose, whose divine right to monarchy cannot be questioned, the violet is the poet's flower. ~Willis Boyd Allen, "The Violet Book," 1909


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


The Eglantine Rose.... has always been considered as the poet's flower... ~George William Francis, The Favorites of the Flower Garden, 1844


Ah, Rose! had'st thou but Beauty's charms
Thou ne'er had been the poet's flower:
Extended on thy thorny arms
Thou had'st not wielded sovereign power...
~James Rigg, "To the Fragrance of the Rose," Wild Flower Lyrics and Other Poems, 1897


Bread feeds the body, indeed, but flowers feed also the soul. ~The Koran


If dandelions were hard to grow, they would be most welcome on any lawn. ~Andrew Mason


I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
~William Wordsworth, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," 1804


Against a dark sky all flowers look like fireworks. There is something strange about them, at once vivid and secret, like flowers traced in fire in the phantasmal garden of a witch. ~G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions, "The Glory of Grey"


I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. ~Claude Monet


The flowers of late winter and early spring occupy places in our hearts well out of proportion to their size. ~Gertrude S. Wister


Springtime flowers bloom like colorful arrows piercing their way to the sun. ~Terri Guillemets


...See Hieracium's various tribe,
Of plumy seed and radiate flowers,
The course of Time their blooms describe,
And wake or sleep appointed hours....
~Charlotte Turner Smith (1749–1806), "The Horologe of the Fields" Addressed to a Young Lady, on seeing at the House of an Acquaintance a magnificent French Timepiece, published 1807


...Broad o'er its imbricated cup
The Goatsbeard spreads its golden rays,
But shuts its cautious petals up,
Retreating from the noon-tide blaze...
~Charlotte Turner Smith (1749–1806), "The Horologe of the Fields"


...Silene, who declines
The garish noontide's blazing light;
But when the evening crescent shines,
Gives all her sweetness to the night....
~Charlotte Turner Smith (1749–1806), "The Horologe of the Fields"


...Thus in each flower and simple bell,
      That in our path untrodden lie,
      Are sweet remembrancers who tell
      How fast the winged moments fly.
Time will steal on with ceaseless pace,
      Yet lose we not the fleeting hours,
      Who still their fairy footsteps trace,
      As light they dance among the flowers.
~Charlotte Turner Smith (1749–1806), "The Horologe of the Fields" Addressed to a Young Lady, on seeing at the House of an Acquaintance a magnificent French Timepiece, published 1807


Mrs. C. Smith, in her last poetical volume, which, alas, is truly a legacy, has fully vindicated her pretensions to the laurel. Her love of Botany, as well as of Poetry, often leads her to the fields, and she suffers not a flower to remain unsung. The thought, in [The Horologe of the Fields], is fanciful, the descriptions are accurate, and the moral excellent. ~Oliver Oldschool, The Port Folio (New Series), 1807 December 12th, Philadelphia


Can we conceive what humanity would be if it did not know the flowers? ~Maurice Maeterlinck


From boyhood I have been in love with the Wildlings: I rank them among my teachers and preachers. To me, as to thousands, they ever seem to whisper such sweet things, and tell such strange and fairy-like stories of their present and past existence, that they appeal to the highest faculties of our being. ~James Rigg, "Preface," Wild Flower Lyrics and Other Poems, 1897  #wildflowers


I stood in the Maytime meadows
By roses circled round,
Where many a fragile blossom
Was bright upon the ground...
~Volkslied (German folk song)


A flower's appeal is in its contradictions — so delicate in form yet strong in fragrance, so small in size yet big in beauty, so short in life yet long on effect. ~Terri Guillemets


Said the other, little daisy, "I am very well content
      To live simply in the meadow where the sun and rain are sent;
      Where the bees all gather sweetness, and the dew falls on my head,
      And the radiance of the moonlight is all around me shed.
"The grass and clover blossoms admire my beauty all day long,
      As I listen to the music of a bird's delightful song..."
~Gertrude Tooley Buckingham, "Two Little Daisies" (1940s)  [The other little daisy was wishing to be a rose. —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]


You can see the goldenrod, that most tenacious and pernicious and beauteous of all New England flora, bowing away from the wind like a great and silent congregation. ~Stephen King, 'Salem's Lot


Let us dance in the sun, wearing wild flowers in our hair... ~Susan Polis Shutz


Wandering through the woodlands, we cannot fail to notice a small white, delicate, bell-shaped flower, which blooms freely in the shady place, yet may often be found decking the high mountain. It is the pretty wood-sorrel (Oxalis acetosella).... It was found by Captain Parry in places where scarcely any other flower ventured to blossom.... It is a humble little flower, lowly in growth, its delicate pearl-white petals elegantly veined with purple lines.... Almost as beautiful is its bright green triplet leaf, shaped like three small hearts joined together at the points, and which spring profusely around the blossoms. It is the most sensitive wilding we have; for so soon as the evening dews begin to fall, it droops its leaves around the stems, and ever seems to shrink at the approach of night, or the faintest whisper of a coming storm. ~Leigh Page, Stars of the Earth: Or, Wild Flowers of the Months, 1868 [Behind Shelley's "sensitive plant" (mimosa pudica, el morí-viví), this is a great candidate to be the floral symbol of the HSP-INFJ! —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]


The flower that follows the sun does so even in cloudy days. ~Robert Leighton


I wonder if the Daffodil
Shrinks from the touch of frost,
And when her veins grow stiff and still
She dreams that life is lost?
Ah, if she does, how sweet a thing
Her resurrection day in spring!
~Emma C. Dowd, "Daffodil and Crocus," in Country Life in America: A Magazine for the Home-maker, the Vacation-seeker, the Gardener, the Farmer, the Nature-teacher, the Naturalist, April 1902


[L]et us linger awhile in the wonderful old Lilac walk. It is a glory of tender green and shaded amethyst and grateful hum of bees, the very voice of Spring. Every sense is gratified, even that of touch, when the delicate plumes of the fragrant Lilac blossoms brush your cheek as you walk through its path; there is no spot of fairer loveliness than this Lilac walk in May. It is a wonderful study of flickering light and grateful shade in midsummer.... The very spirit of the Lilacs seems visible, etched with a purity of touch that makes them sentient, speaking beings, instead of silent plants. ~Alice Morse Earle, "In Lilac Tide," Old-Time Gardens Newly Set Forth, 1901


I like to think a flower opens itself to outgrow its plantedness. That it yearns to be carried away. ~Author Unknown


Being perfect artists and ingenuous poets, the Chinese have piously preserved the love and holy cult of flowers; one of the very rare and most ancient traditions which has survived their decadence. And since flowers had to be distinguished from each other, they have attributed graceful analogies to them, dreamy images, pure and passionate names which perpetuate and harmonize in our minds the sensations of gentle charm and violent intoxication with which they inspire us. So it is that certain peonies, their favorite flower, are saluted by the Chinese, according to their form or color, by these delicious names, each an entire poem and an entire novel:The Young Girl Who Offers Her Breasts, or: The Water That Sleeps Beneath the Moon, or: The Sunlight in the Forest, or: The First Desire of the Reclining Virgin, or: My Gown Is No Longer All White Because in Tearing It the Son of Heaven Left a Little Rosy Stain; or, even better, this one: I Possessed My Lover in the Garden. ~Octave Mirbeau, Torture Garden, "The Garden"  [If you are interested in writings on the names of flowers, see also Thomas Wentworth Higginson's beautiful essay "April Days" from the 1800s. —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]


A profusion of pink roses bending ragged in the rain speaks to me of all gentleness and its enduring. ~The Collected Later Poems of William Carlos Williams


Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of their character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning. ~Lydia M. Child


Have you ever seen a flower down
Sometimes angels skip around
And in their blissful state of glee
Bump into a daisy or sweet pea.
~Terri Guillemets


But as for the particular William in deference to whom a rosy summer flower is called "sweet," I am inclined to regard him as a somewhat lackadaisical fellow. By a coincidence the flower, which is not remarkably elegant or graceful—on the contrary, it is an erect, sturdy, bunch plant, with the blossom for the most part of a bright pronounced crimson, when it is not pied or entirely white, and quite without scent—it is known in France as "the Poet's Pink." Sweet William considered poetic by our fastidious French neighbours! I should as soon, pleasant flower as it is, look for poetry in a cabbage. Our English poets had more reason when they loved and proclaimed their love for the yellow daffodil, the old "daffondowndillly," breaking into different shades of yellow, from rich amber to palest maize, with its tall stalks, nodding heads, and long lance-shaped leaves, the tint of green oats, which form an exquisite setting... ~Sarah Tytler, Footprints: Nature Seen on its Human Side, 1881  [Œillet de poëte, in the French. —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]


Even if you think the Big Bang created the stars, don't you wonder who sent the flowers? ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


I hope some day to meet God, because I want to thank Him for the flowers. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


If you've never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom. ~Terri Guillemets


You can't be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet. ~Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons, 1964


God loved the flowers and invented soil. Man loved the flowers and invented vases. ~Variation of a saying by Jacques Deval (God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.)