Flower Quotes and Sayings

Flower Quotes

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, 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 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 really do intoxicate me. ~Vita Sackville-West

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

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, 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

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

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

...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

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

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

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

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

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"

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

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