A Petal Quotes

A girl as small as a violet, a girl who moves like a flower petal – is pulling me toward her with more force than her mass. ~ Kim In Yook

In mythos and fairy tales, deities and other great spirits test the hearts of humans by showing up in various forms that disguise their divinity. They show up in robes, rags, silver sashes, or with muddy feet. They show up with skin dark as old wood, or in scales made of rose petal, as a frail child, as a lime-yellow old woman, as a man who cannot speak, or as an animal who can. The great powers are testing to see if humans have yet learned to recognize the greatness of soul in all its varying forms. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

When my own mother died, there seemed to me to be no answer to anything. For a time the only universality was death. And then I remember walking in the dusk along the quiet little street toward the house now so empty and meaningless. There was light enough from the sky to cast the lattice shadow of leaves on the walk. The sound of the river was steady and swift, and the air smelled of sulphur from the mills beyond it. As I looked up, a delicate petal of moon drifted into the tender blue, and all at once I thought, How beautiful God made the world! How wonderful that the stars still shine! And I was comforted. ~ Gladys Taber

Silent as a flower, her face fell in dismay, aware that the ghost of lust ate and left, sensing that there was a different scent of perfume consuming the room, and that she had numbered and counted the he loves me, he loves me not of each petal, where the lifeless dust had settle. ~ Anthony Liccione

Plants Fed On by Fawns"

All the flowers: the pleated leaves of the hellebore;
And the false blossom of the calla, a leaf like a petal -
The white flesh of a woman bathing - a leaf over-
Shadowing the small flowers hidden in the spadix;
And fly poison, tender little flower, whose cursed root
Pounded into a fine white powder will destroy flies.
But why kill flies? They do not trouble me. They
Are like the fruit the birds feed on. They are like
The wind in the trees, or the sap that threads all things,
The blue blood moving through branch and vine,
Through the wings of dead things and living things....
If I lift my hand? If I write to you? The letters
Can be stored in a box. Can they constitute the shape
Of a love? Can the paper be ground? Can the box
Be altar and garden plot and bed? Can there rise
From the bed the form of a two-headed creature,
A figure that looks both forward and back, keeping
Watch always, one head sleeping while the other wakes,
The bird head sleeping while the lion head wakes,
And then the changing of the guard?.... No,
The flies do not trouble me. They are like the stars
At night. Common and beautiful. They are like
My thoughts. I stood at midnight in the orchard.
There were so many stars, and yet the stars,
The very blackness of the night, though perfectly
Cold and clear, seemed to me to be insub ~ Brigit Pegeen Kelly

I am struck by what a tawdry magician's trick Time is after all. I am sixty-six years old. Viewed from your coign of vantage - facing toward the future - sixty-six years is a great deal of time. It is all of the experience of your life more than three times over. But, viewed from my coign of vantage - facing toward the past - this sixty-six years was the fluttering down of a cherry petal. I feel that my life was a picture hastily sketched but never filled in . . . for lack of time. Only yesterday - but more than fifty years ago - I walked along this river with my father. I can remember how big and strong his hand felt to my small fingers. Fifty years. But all the insignificant, busy things - the terribly important, now forgotten things that cluttered the intervening time collapse and fall away from my memory. And I remember another yesterday when my daughter was a little girl. We walked along here. At this very moment, the nerves in my hand remember the feeling of her chubby fingers clinging to one of mine. ~ Trevanian

When I think of it as happening to somebody else, it seems that the idea of me soaked to the skin, surrounded by countless driving streaks of silver, and moving through when I completely forget my material existence, and view myself from a purely objective standpoint, can I, as a figure in a painting, blend into the beautiful harmony of my natural surroundings. The moment, however, I feel annoyed because of the rain, or miserable because my legs are weary because of the rain, or miserable because my legs are weary with walking, then I have already ceased to be a character in a poem, or a figure in a painting, and I revert to the uncomprehending, insensitive man in the street I was before. I am then even blind to the elegance of the fleeting clouds; unable even to feel any bond of sympathy with a falling petal or the cry of a bird, much less appreciate the great beauty in the image of myself, completely alone, walking through the mountains in spring. ~ Soseki Natsume

Fourth Meditation"

1

I was always one for being alone,
Seeking in my own way, eternal purpose;
At the edge of the field waiting for the pure moment;
Standing, silent, on sandy beaches or walking along green embankments;
Knowing the sinuousness of small waters:
As a chip or shell, floating lazily with a slow current...

Was it yesterday I stretched out the thin bones of my innocence?
O the songs we hide, singing only to ourselves!
Once I could touch my shadow, and be happy;
In the white kingdoms, I was light as a seed,
Drifting with the blossoms,
A pensive petal.

But a time comes when the vague life of the mouth no longer suffices;
The dead make more impossible demands from their silence;
The soul stands, lonely in its choice,
Waiting, itself a slow thing,
In the changing body.

The river moves, wrinkled by midges,
A light wind stirs in the pine needles.
The shape of a lark rises from a stone;
But there is no song. ~ Theodore Roethke

Learn from your past and shut the door behind to live in present.Our past is just like a dry rose which was once a rose with all colors of life, with sweet fragrance, with soft petal, with thorns but now it is left with only thorns which could still hurt. ~ Ideaswar

I love color. It must submit to me. And I love art. I kneel before it, and it must become mine. Everything around me glows with passion. Every day reveals a new red flower, glowing, scarlet red. Everyone around me carries them. Some wear them quietly hidden in their hearts. And they are like poppies just opening, of which one can see only here and there a hint of red petal peeking out from the green bud. ~ Paula Modersohn-Becker

There is no day that anyone ever lived that is identical to any day ever lived before it. The future is a flower in constant bloom. Each day a new petal unfolds. ~ Karlyle Tomms

Once a woman told me that colored flowers would seem more bright if you added a few white flowers to give the colors definition. Every petal of blue lupin is edged with white, so that a field of lupins is more blue than you can imagine. ~ John Steinbeck

I am an atom;
you are like the countenance of the Sun for me.
I am a patient of Love
you are like medicine for me.
Without wings, without feathers,
I fly about looking for you.
I have become a Rose petal
and you are like the Wind for me.
Take me for a ride. ~ Rumi

In the middle of a garden grew a rose tree; it was full of roses, and in the loveliest of them all lived an elf. He was so tiny that no human eye could see him. He had a snug little room behind every petal of the rose. He was as well made and as perfect as any human child, and he had wings reaching from his shoulders to his feet. Oh, what a delicious scent there was in his room, and how lovely and transparent the walls were, for they were palest pink, rose petals. ~ Hans Christian Andersen

Thunder rumbled. My heart beat faster. I turned away from Evernight for the last time and looked back at the flower as it trembled upon its branch. A single petal was torn away by the wind. Pushing my hands through the thorns, I felt lashes of pain across my skin, but i kept going determined.
But when my fingertip touched the flower, it instantly darkened, withering and drying as each petal turned black. ~ Claudia Gray

If it is meant for you, it will come to you. It will find you and reach you. So, don't despair when, despite your best intention and effort, something does not happen the way you envisioned it and planned it. Take it easy. Of course, you have every right to have an intention, put forth a plan and execute it, but you have no right to insist that just because you did all that you must get what you want. The outcomes are never in your hand. The idea that you deserve something is what you have grown within you. So, drop that idea. Just do your bit, and do it well, in any situation. And leave the results, the outcomes, to Life. If you must get it, you will. When you do, be grateful for Life's compassion. When you don't, be accepting of Life's verdict. ~ AVIS Viswanathan

I believe ... that the petal of a flower or a tiny worm on the path says far more, contains far more than all the books in the library. One cannot say very much with mere letters and words. Sometimes I'll be writing a Greek letter, a theta or an omega, and tilt my pen just the slightest bit; suddenly the letter has a tail and becomes a fish; in a second it evokes all the streams and rivers of the world, all that is cool and humid, Homer's sea and the waters on which Saint Peter wandered; or becomes a bird, flaps its tail, shakes out its feathers, puffs itself up, laughs, flies away. You probably don't appreciate letters like that, very much, do you, Narcissus? But I say: with them God wrote the world. ~ Hermann Hesse

Forgetfulness in people might wound, their ingratitude corrode, but this voice, pouring endlessly, year in year out, would take whatever it might be; this vow; this van; this life; this procession, would wrap them all about and carry them on, as in the rough stream of a glacier the ice holds a splinter of bone, a blue petal, some oak trees, and rolls them on. ~ Virginia Woolf

Lucy happily settled down to work. First she sent for papyrus and handmade a book leaf by leaf, binding the leaves together between board covers. Then she filled each page from memory, drew English roses budding and Chinese roses in full bloom, peppercorn-pink Bourbon roses climbing walls and silvery musk roses drowsing in flowerbeds. She took every rose she'd ever seen, made them as lifelike as she could (where she shaded each petal the rough paper turned silken), and in these lasting forms she offered them to Safiye. ~ Helen Oyeyemi

I can't feel a thing; All mournful petal storms are dancing inside the very private spring of my head. ~ Franz Kafka

I'm a sunflower with a cracked petal. ~ Augusten Burroughs

COVID-19's forcing the whole world to transition - from 'becoming to being'!
Isn't it amazing? Don't you see what's happening? The whole world has surrendered; it has been forced, in fact, to capitulate – to jump off the becoming treadmill, to being home, just being! ~ AVIS Viswanathan

He grinned, teeth and dimples and freckles moving like dust in a ray of sunlight. "Ayup, petal."

Oh ~ Alexis Hall

Once I found a sticky-note that said someone was placed on a "petal stool". If you ask me, that sounds a lot better than a pedestal. If I had to choose something to be placed on, I would choose the petal stool. ~ Shane Hinton

The mere fact of my novel being filmed means very little to me. For a long while after 'The Crimson Petal's publication in 2002, it looked as though Hollywood was going to adapt it. ~ Michel Faber

Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart;
The end lost in dream,
They float past our view,
We only watch their glad, early start.
Freighted with hope,
Crimsoned with joy,
We scatter the leaves of our opening rose;
Their widening scope,
Their distant employ,
We never shall know. And the stream as it flows
Sweeps them away,
Each one is gone
Ever beyond into infinite ways.
We alone stay
While years hurry on,
The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays. ~ Amy Lowell

You cannot disturb the tiniest petal of a flower without the troubling of a distant star. ~ Arthur Eddington

If he'd been able to he would have rolled out a rose-petal carpet at her feet. He would have liked to conduct an orchestra of birds to sing as rainbows appeared in the sky, one by one. ~ Jose Eduardo Agualusa

Observing any human being from infancy, seeing someone come into existence, like a new flower in bud, each petal first tightly furled around another, and then the natural loosening and unfurling, the opening into a bloom, the life of that bloom, must be something wonderful to behold; to see experience collect in the eyes, around the corners of the mouth, the weighing down of the brow, the heaviness in heart and soul, the thick gathering around the waist, the breasts, the slowing down of footsteps not from old age but only with the caution of life-all this is something so wonderful to observe, so wonderful to behold; the pleasure for the observer, the beholder, is an invisible current between the two, observed and observer, beheld and beholder, and I believe that no life is complete, no life is really whole, without this invisible current, which is in many ways a definition of love. ~ Jamaica Kincaid

Many a petal has yet to fall before the last one falls. ~ Marty Rubin

The hipster contingent has taken over a lot of the commercial streets, and now you can't go two blocks without running into some up-its-own-ass artisanal shop with a name that's just two random nouns thrown together with an ampersand. Satchel & Dove. Twig & Petal. Those are the places where you find out there's such a thing as boutique tarragon mayonnaise and that a baby onesie can legitimately cost sixty dollars. (p.169) ~ Una LaMarche

I set my toothbrush down, then leaned into the mirror and stared into my own eyes. I could feel myself disintegrating inside myself like a past-bloom flower in the wind. Every time I moved a muscle, another petal of me blew away. Please, I thought. Please. ~ Cheryl Strayed

It is at the edge of a petal that love waits. ~ William Carlos Williams

People sometimes say that sorrow is mental but longing is physical. One is a wound, the other an amputated limb, a withered petal compared to a snapped stem. ~ Fredrik Backman

Floating"

Our canoe idles in the idling current
Of the tree and vine and rush enclosed
Backwater of a torpid midwestern stream;
Revolves slowly, and lodges in the glutted
Waterlilies. We are tired of paddling.
All afternoon we have climbed the weak current,
Up dim meanders, through woods and pastures,
Past muddy fords where the strong smell of cattle
Lay thick across the water; singing the songs
Of perfect, habitual motion; ski songs,

Nightherding songs, songs of the capstan walk,
The levee, and the roll of the voyageurs.
Tired of motion, of the rhythms of motion,
Tired of the sweet play of our interwoven strength,
We lie in each other's arms and let the palps
Of waterlily leaf and petal hold back
All motion in the heat thickened, drowsing air.
Sing to me softly, Westron Wynde, Ah the Syghes,
Mon coeur se recommend à vous, Phoebi Claro;
Sing the wandering erotic melodies
Of men and women gone seven hundred years,
Softly, your mouth close to my cheek.
Let our thighs lie entangled on the cushions,
Let your breasts in their thin cover
Hang pendant against my naked arms and throat;
Let your odorous hair fall across our eyes;
Kiss me with those subtle, melodic lips.
As I undress you, your pupils are black, wet,
Immense, and your skin ivory and humid.
Move softly, move hardly at all, part your thighs,
Take me slowly w ~ Kenneth Rexroth

He growled a sigh and her insides got all warm and gooey. She really needed to date nice men who didn't growl.
-Lily Travis ~ Lauren Dane

True enlightenment arrives the moment you understand the difference between your wants and your needs. When you awaken to this understanding, you will realize that Life has always been providing for you, caring for you, giving you all that you need. This is how you stop wanting anything, anymore and start living with what you have, with what is. This is how you learn to be happy despite your circumstances. ~ AVIS Viswanathan

The COVID-19 pandemic is Life's way of slowing us all down. So, let us take a reflective pause and focus on taking care of ourselves and each other! As it is with most inscrutable situations in Life, there is no other way to deal with this crisis, going with the flow is THE way...! ~ AVIS Viswanathan

The laying of fish on the embers, the taste of the fish, the feel of the texture of bread, the round and the half-loaf, the grain of a petal, the rain-bow and the rain. ~ Hilda Doolittle

When you left
you left behind a field
of silent flowers
under a sky
full of unstirred clouds...you left
a million butterflies
mid-silky flutters

You left like midnight rain
against my dreaming ears

Oh and how you left
leaving my coffee scentless
and my couch comfortless

leaving upon my fingers
the melting snow of you

you left behind
a calendar full of empty days
and seasons full of aimless wanders

leaving me alone
with an armful of sunsets

your reflection behind
in every puddle
your whispers
upon every curtain
your fragrance
inside every petal

you left your echoes in between
the silence of my eyes

Oh and how you left
leaving my sands footless
and my shores songless

leaving me with windows full of
moistened moonlight

nights and nights
of only a half-warmed soul

and when you left...
you left behind a lifetime
of moments untouched

the light of a million stars
unshed

and when you left
you somehow
left my poem...unfinished.



(Published in Taj Mahal Review Vol.11
Number 1 June 2012) ~ Sanober Khan

How do you last a torrid time in Life?
1.Accept the reality that you are in the throes of a crisis. Stop wishing that it didn't exist. Acceptance always delivers inner peace.
2.Know that the storm will always be strong. By even thinking of its ferocity, you are only going to feel debilitated. At the epicenter of a storm, it is always calm. Find that center, your center. That's where you will find strength.
3.Your center is where you lose sense of time, place and thought. Art – anything inherent that makes you come alive – often leads you there.
4.Trust the process of Life. Do what you can do without losing your inner peace – daily, diligently.
5.No matter how intense it is, no storm lasts forever. All storms pass. So, be patient, surrender completely, let go…and offer yourself to be led by Life… ~ AVIS Viswanathan

Now, anyone with two thoughts in their mind can see that no future is set in stone. An infinite number of futures bud at the end of every moment, and each one of them can be changed by a falling rose petal. ~ Robin Hobb

Founders Day tradition dictated a peck on the cheek, but Travis had never been a follower. He lowered his head and took advantage of her surprise. Her lips were soft as a rose petal and just as pliable. He'd meant it to be a quick, comforting brushing of lips, but then she responded. Just the faintest movement. The yielding lit a fire in his belly that wouldn't be extinguished anytime soon. He went back for seconds. I've missed you so much. He took her face in his hands, wanted to thread his fingers through that long thick hair and pull her closer. But then two palms planted into his chest and pushed hard. Her eyes spat sparks. She dragged the back of her hand across her lips as if wiping the kiss away. Won't be as easy as that, darlin'. ~ Denise Hunter

The way you seem nervous makes me think you don't know that I'm in love with you."
I looked up at him, eyes wide and hands froze. Click.
"I love you, Petal. I've known it for a while now, but everything changed for me last night. ~ Christina Lauren

Byzantium

The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.

Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,
More miracle than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the starlit golden bough,
Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.

At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.

Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,
Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood,
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floo ~ W.B. Yeats

Now the moon of the Aztecs is at the zenith, and all the world lies still. Full and white, the white of bones, the white of a skull; blistering the center of the sky well with its throbbing, not touching it on any side. Now the patio is a piebald place of black and white, burning in the downward-teeming light. Not a leaf moves, not a petal falls, in this fierce amalgam. ("The Moon Of Montezuma") ~ Cornell Woolrich

Rozealle

she is a storm; she is a river
untamed; untouched
she will engulf you; she will shatter you
hold her softly; caress her gently
she is fragile like a rose petal
she is tender like the touch me not leaf
she is the warm glow of the morning sun
she is the magic of a full moon night! ~ Avijeet Das

You cannot be who you are without having gone through what you went through. ~ AVIS Viswanathan

I took off petal after petal, as if you were a rose,
in order to see your soul,
and I didn't see it. ~ Juan Ramon Jimenez

If he could learn to love another, and earn her love in return by the time the last petal fell, then the spell would be broken. If not, he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time. As the years passed, he fell into despair and lost all hope. For who could ever learn to love a beast? -Beauty & the Beast ~ Walt Disney Company

I have walked
into the wild
to witness

how falls a petal

from a yellow rose

silent and sudden
like a moment

defining time. ~ Colin Andersen

The Petal table is a flower that is always in bloom. ~ Richard Schultz

Let us find inner freedom in each lucky moment that we encounter, like a sun-basking butterfly that finds peace on a cherry blossom petal. ("I seek you") ~ Erik Pevernagie

The exceeding beauty of the earth, in her splendour of life, yields a new thought with every petal. The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live... ~ Richard Jefferies

Anger is both a destructor and a catalyst for progress. When
directed at someone, it consumes you; but when directed at an issue, it is constructive energy. It then transforms as fuel that drives change – at a personal level and in your circle of influence. ~ AVIS Viswanathan

She looked the way a rose petal looks when you crush it between finger and thumb. ~ Rupert Thomson

Stronger Than Time

Since I have set my lips to your full cup, my sweet,
Since I my pallid face between your hands have laid,
Since I have known your soul, and all the bloom of it,
And all the perfume rare, now buried in the shade;

Since it was given to me to hear on happy while,
The words wherein your heart spoke all its mysteries,
Since I have seen you weep, and since I have seen you smile,
Your lips upon my lips, and your eyes upon my eyes;

Since I have known above my forehead glance and gleam,
A ray, a single ray, of your star, veiled always,
Since I have felt the fall, upon my lifetime's stream,
Of one rose petal plucked from the roses of your days;

I now am bold to say to the swift changing hours,
Pass, pass upon your way, for I grow never old,
Fleet to the dark abysm with all your fading flowers,
One rose that none may pluck, within my heart I hold.

Your flying wings may smite, but they can never spill
The cup fulfilled of love, from which my lips are wet;
My heart has far more fire than you can frost to chill,
My soul more love than you can make my soul forget ~ Victor Hugo

And, I think, this greening does thaw at the edges, at least, of my own cold season. Joy sneaks in: listening to music, riding my bicycle, I catch myself feeling, in a way that's as old as I am but suddenly seems unfamiliar, light. I have felt so heavy for so long. At first I felt odd- as if I shouldn't be feeling this lightness, that familiar little catch of pleasure in the heart which is inexplicable, though a lovely passage of notes or the splendidly turned petal of a tulip has triggered it. It's my buoyancy, part of what keeps me alive: happy, suddenly with the concomitant experience of a sonata and the motion of the shadows of leaves. I have the desire to be filled with sunlight, to soak my skin in as much of it as I can drink up, after the long interior darkness of this past season, the indoor vigil, in this harshest and darkest of winters, outside and in. ~ Mark Doty

Expectation is the hoary curse of humanity. One can listen to words, and see them as the unfolding of a petal or, indeed, the very opposite: each word bent and pushed tighter, smaller, until the very packet of meaning vanishes with a flip of deft fingers. Poets and tellers of tales can be tugged by either current, into the riotous conflagration of beauteous language or the pithy reduction of the tersely colourless. ~ Steven Erikson

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

The essence of intelligent living is to do what you can and must do while thriving with the unknown, with uncertainty. So, don't wish the darkness away, don't wait for the clouds to clear, embrace your current reality and do whatever you can best do in the circumstances. You will be amazed with how happy you can really be with what is. ~ AVIS Viswanathan

Life is fragile Grace – it is no more than a petal of cherry blossom; thriving and in full bloom one minute and blown to the ground by a sudden gust of wind the next. We shouldn't take our life for granted and we should do whatever we can to make ourselves happy. ~ Hazel Gaynor

we try looking there?" "Good idea," Rachel said, walking toward it. "Oh, aren't the trees beautiful with all their blossoms?" The others agreed. Delicate sprays of pinky-white flowers lined the branches of the apple trees. "And that one is even prettier than the others," Kirsty said, pointing out a tree a short distance away. It was covered in blossoms. "I wonder why it's flowering so well?" A thought struck her and she stopped. Kirsty looked excitedly at Tia. "You don't think it has anything to do with your petal's magic powers, do you?" Tia's eyes lit up. ~ Daisy Meadows

From a bud of the evening a flower opens its petal in the dawn. The world sees the bud of the last night smiling with nectar on its lips. No one observed the diligence that was needed for the opening of each petal. ~ Pratibha Ray

Humor is a petal on the flower of hope, and hope blossoms on the vine of faith. They have faith in each other and faith that life has meaning, and from this faith comes their indefatigable good humor, which is their greatest gift to each other - and to me. ~ Dean Koontz

Soft sun shone down on a misty cathedral at the opposite end of a football-field length courtyard. The cathedral had a long pointed tower with beautiful rose and ivory stained glass windows. Pink-petal flowers and deep green ivy climbed the stones from the ground to it's roof. A large fountain stood in the middle of the courtyard with water falling from several lion's heads. Between the misty air and rolling slope of the earth, the grounds reminded me of a long lost fairy tale. ~ Priya Ardis

She seemed a drift of fragile ash or snow, something impermanent that had blown into his arms accidentally: the petal of a faerie flower, the white feather of an angel's wing. ~ Cassandra Clare

He wanted a faery. More than anything else in the world. He had already imagined exactly how it should happen. He would set up the invitation, and the next day there would be a petal-winged pisky clinging to the top of his bedpost. It would have a foolish grin on its face, and large ears, and it wouldn't notice at all that Bartholomew was small and ugly and different from everyone else.
But no. Mother had to ruin everything. ~ Stefan Bachmann

Earth relates to the Universe as the second segment of the left antenna of an aphid sitting on a flower petal in a garden in Teaneck, New Jersey, for a few hours this afternoon. ~ Edward O. Wilson

I will use a flower petal for paper,
And write you the sweetest letter,
You are the sultan of my heart,
Sultan of my heart. ~ Khaled Hosseini

Lougarry was waiting over the brow of the hill, lying so still in the grass that a butterfly had perched within an inch of her nose. The stems bent and shimmered as she rose to her feet, and the butterfly floated away like a wind-borne petal. Fern wondered if , like Ragginbone, the she-wolf possessed the faculty of making herself at one with her surroundings, not invisible but transmuted, so close to nature that she could blend with it at will and be absorbed into its many forms, becoming grass blade and wildflower, still earth and moving air, resuming her true self at the prompting of a thought. It came to Fern that we are all part of one vast pattern of Being, the real world and the shadow-world, sunlight and werelight, Man and spirit, and to understand and accept that was the first step toward the abnegation of ego, the affirmation of the soul. To comprehend the wind, not as a movement of molecules but as the pulse of the air, the pulse of her pulse, was to become the wind, to blow with it through the dancing grasses to the edge of the sky... ~ Jan Siegel

Things never quite get so bad as we imagine them to be. Fear of the unknown makes us delay decisions. But if we turn around and face our fears they make way for acceptance and decision-making. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is what fear delivers unto us when we face our fears. Life is never easy at this point, but it becomes a lot simpler to navigate through the maze of our problems; the pain is intense, but we don't suffer. ~ AVIS Viswanathan

In early spring, every petal of tulips sing a song of love and life, dance with joy and happiness to enjoy her short life of dazzling beauty. ~ Debasish Mridha

When facing a Life-changing crisis, don't expect your situation to turn around instantaneously. It won't. So, prepare for the long haul. Nourish yourself. Meditate. Pray. Eat your meals on time and please eat healthy stuff. Exercise. Go for long walks. Goof off once in a while. Your being morose, or your worrying stiff, is not going to solve your problems. The situation will resolve only when the time arrives. Until that happens, you have to last, you have to survive. So, take care of yourself. Every moment. Every day. ~ AVIS Viswanathan

We're moving towards such a strange time.A time when all our moral choices will be complicated and compromised by our love of progress ~ Michel Faber

Don't imagine you are in a worse place than you actually are. Things could have been far worse. So, seize the day, count your blessings and move on. You can survive a crisis only by dealing it with one day at a time. Don't add up all your problems in your mind and think you are finished. Compartmentalize your problems; put them in different buckets and project-manage them separately. This is how you live through uncertain times – making decisions when there are few or no options to choose from. You never see it this way when you are going through a crisis. But, unfailingly, every crisis leaves you stronger, wiser – and happy! ~ AVIS Viswanathan

I want to stumble across something on the sidewalk and pretend she dropped it: a flower petal, a scarf. And then I want to set it on fire. ~ Tiffanie DeBartolo

A little bird'll be here with the morning." "Oh?" said the rose-petal lady. "Tomorrow morning?" "That's the only morning coming." "It can't be," the rose-petal lady said. "It's too soon." "No it ain't. Right on time. ~ Toni Morrison

petal." I don't look at it that closely. "That blossom started as a seed," she continues. "It was buried deep in the cold, dark ground. One day when the soil was warm and moist, the little seed split apart and began to climb to a world it could not see. Imagine the courage it had! It did not know what it would find when it broke through the surface. The scorching sun? The gardener's blade? The crushing hoof of a cow? But the seed courageously pushed on so that one day, it could become a beautiful flower." She points a finger at me. "You must have the courage of the seed, Anna. Without it, you will stay buried. You will rot and die. It does not matter how smart you are, or how pretty, or if you have money and many friends. If you do not have courage, you will never blossom into the flower you were meant to be. ~ William Andrews

As long as I can hear the sweet melody of your words,
I need not;
The angel's secret, to be whispered in my ears

As long as I can lace your silky fingers round my own,
I need not;
Pretty diamonds, nor big cash nor gold

As long as I can watch the handsome sunshine of your face,
I need not;
Open skies, nor snowfall, nor the rain

As long as I can gaze into the emeralds of your eyes,
I need not;
New colors, new wings or paradise

As long as I can feel the tender tickle of your breath,
I need not;
The drifting wind, nor its call, nor caress

As long as I can feel your soft lips upon mine,
I need not;
Melted sugar, nor the most expensive of wines

As long as I can feel your warm body close to me
I need not;
A blanket, nor a bonfire's luxury

As long as I can see you every morning I wake,
I need not;
A mirror, nor a cloud, nor shade

As long as I can keep you in every petal of memories
I need not:
Dreams, nor desires, nor fantasies

And as long as I can hold you in every moment that I breathe,
I need not;
Oxygen, nor blood, nor heartbeats. ~ Sanober Khan

When he died...part of her soul faded away. One day she was something else to look at in full bloom, and the next she was dropping one beautiful petal at a time until all her heart was gone like a bunch of spent tulips. ~ Ann Hite

My body is like a single nerve ending from head to toe. Everything feels alive and more. My heart is opening, like the heart of Rappaccini's daughter, Beatrice, when she meets young Giovanni after he wanders into her garden. As I stand there, I can almost feel it unfold, petal by petal, beat by beat. ~ Jennifer Niven

Three or four days later he was still thinking about seal flipper pie. Remembered the two raw eggs Petal gave him. That he invested with pathetic meaning.
'Petal,' said Quoyle to Wavey, 'hated to cook. Hardly ever did.' Thought of the times he had fixed dinner for her, set put his stupid candles, folded the napkins as though they were important, waited and finally ate alone, the radio on for company. And later dined with the children, shoveling in canned spaghetti, scraping baby food off small chins.
'Once she gave me two eggs. Raw eggs for a present.' He had made an omelet of them, hand-fed her as thought she were a nestling bird. And saved the shells in a paper cup on top of the kitchen cabinet. Where they still must be. ~ Annie Proulx

Your slightest look easily will unclose me, though I have closed myself as fingers, you open petal by petal myself a Spring opens her first rose. ~ E. E. Cummings

For a girl, with each boy it's as though a petal gets plucked each time. ~ Susan Minot

Messengers often come when you struggle with a decision, need support or are trying to find your balance. They can come as animals like coyote and lizard appeared for Kate and for me. They can be spirit guides, angels, family members, ancestors and friends. A messenger can even be me! Many of them you will not notice because you are too preoccupied to see them. There may come a time, however, when you might sense the millions of angels too small to be witnessed, like fairies that live in the curve of a leaf or who sleep under the tiniest rose petal. ~ Kate McGahan

Tell me now, Anna, he silently pleaded as she ran her finger over a rose petal. Tell me I could have a son, that we could have a son, a daughter, a baby, a future - anything. ~ Grace Burrowes

Friendship is like a rose ... opening one petal at a time, only as it unfolds ... day by day it reveals its true beauty. ~ Joan Walsh Anglund

Understand a simple truth about Life: you have to go through what you have to go through! No amount of praying or wishing can change what you have to, and will, experience in Life. So, stop resisting anything that you dislike and are faced with. The role of a crisis is to make you stronger, wiser and, interestingly, happy. Look back at all that you have been through and you will find that you are better from your experiences. So, why be bitter about whatever's happening to you now? Embrace your current reality, accept it as your new normal, and keep doing what you can possibly do each given day. Over time, you will find yourself soaked in equanimity, no matter how hard the going is! ~ AVIS Viswanathan

They had a year of joy, twelve months of the strange heaven which the salmon know on beds of river shingle, under the gin-clear water. For twenty-four years they were guilty, but this first year was the only one which seemed like happiness. Looking back on it, when they were old, they did not remember that in this year it had ever rained or frozen. The four seasons were coloured like the edge of a rose petal for them. ~ T.H. White

Throughout my career, I've realized that there are a lot of great opportunities out there to be associated with programming. It may have started elsewhere, as Crimson Petal did in the UK. So, our main strategy for Encore is to go through those types of partnership acquisitions. ~ Chris Albrecht

She is fragile as the morning dew
melting in the warmth of a child's smile;
stirring at the lonely, lovely waft
of a butterfly's wings;
tender as the curve
of a wildflower petal.
She is fierce as a summer storm
now raging against the fiery sky;
now raining tears to soothe
the sun-scorched earth.
She is soft as a midnight breeze
swaying to the sound of waves breaking
on distant shores;
whispering comfort to a world
steeped in the dark night of inhumanity.
She is brilliant as the rising Phoenix
lifting the suffering from the ashes;
her own suffering woven into wings of fire
in the long watches of the night.
She is serene and turbulent as the silvered water
hiding currents unknown beneath the gentle gaze
of a human who has walked a thousand miles and still has more to go. ~ L.R. Knost

And then he came, and pulled her petals off one by one, forcing her to surround herself with thorns to survive. But he missed one petal. And she guards it with a tiger's ferocity. ~ Sara Wolf

You and I are cobbled out of carbon cells that were once other things entirely. We could have a carbon cell in one of our elbows that was once part of a trilobite's tail. Or a cell from Atilla the Hun's moustache in our eye. Or an ancient lotus petal in our tonsils. ~ Craig Davidson

Van tortured himself with thoughts of insufficient filial affection - a long story of unconcern, amused scorn, physical repulsion, and habitual dismissal. He looked around, making wild amends, willing her spirit to give him an unequivocal, and indeed all-deciding sign, of continued being behind the veil of time, beyond the flesh of space. But no response came, not a petal fell on his bench, not a gnat touched his hand. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Ah, the ancient language of sarcasm. How it suits you."
"Why thank you, petal. It is one of my many talents, and I happen to be fluent in the language." I dazzled him with my smile.
"You need to give me a manly nickname."
"You haven't given me any reason to give you one yet."
"That's harsh. ~ Elizabeth Morgan

Fortunate is the person who can succeed in extracting honey from such a flower as this life, whose root and every petal is bitterness. ~ Lynn Cullen

Why? How had this otherwise sensible woman who had only met Beamabeth as a screaming purple blob fallen under her spell? Or had Beamabeth slipped immaculate into the world, petal-cheeked and smiling amidst gleaming golden curls? ~ Frances Hardinge

You wake up from your stupor, from taking your Life for granted, only when you understand its transient nature. When you realize that it is a limited-period offer, that it is literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity…that's when you really start living! ~ AVIS Viswanathan

Facing your fears is key to flowing with Life…Flowing is an important word here: are you flowing with Life or are you fighting it? When you flow with Life, through accepting and living with what is, then miraculously, magically, Life reveals a big secret to you – that fearlessness is not the absence of fear…in fact, it is what fear delivers to you when you turn around and face a situation that is tormenting you, scaring you. What you run away from, will chase you, haunt you…but when you face your fears, the game changes dramatically! You are in control now, not your fears! And when you are in control, while you may not be able to solve every problem immediately, you can deal with the situation calmly, efficiently. This is how you learn to be happy, no matter what you are going through! ~ AVIS Viswanathan