Blossoms Quotes

Prologue
Flying 1

The almond tree knows
before all the other trees

The almond tree knows
that Spring is coming
before all the other trees

The almond tree knows
that Spring is coming
so well
it blossoms
in the winter ~ Alexandra Psaropoulou

Say you could view a time lapse film of our planet: what would you see?

Transparent images moving through light, "an infinite storm of beauty."
The beginning is swaddled in mists, blasted by random blinding flashes. Lava pours and cools; seas boil and flood. Clouds materialize and shift; now you can see the earth's face through only random patches of clarity. The land shudders and splits, like pack ice rent by widening lead. Mountains burst up, jutting, and dull and soften before your eyes, clothed in forests like felt. The ice rolls up, grinding green land under water forever; the ice rolls back. Forests erupt and disappear like fairy rings. The ice rolls up- mountains are mowed into lakes, land rises wet from the sea like a surfacing whale- the ice rolls back.

A blue-green streaks the highest ridges, a yellow-green spreads from the south like a wave up a strand. A red dye seems to leak from the north down the ridges and into the valleys, seeping south; a white follows the red, then yellow-green washes north, then red spreads again, then white, over and over, making patterns of color too intricate to follow. Slow the film. You see dust storms, locusts, floods, in dizzying flash-frames.

Zero in on a well-watered shore and see smoke from fires drifting. Stone cities rise, spread, and crumble, like paths of alpine blossoms that flourish for a day an inch above the permafrost, that iced earth no root can suck, and wither in a hour. New cit ~ Annie Dillard

Somewhere in his heart he had recognized who she was. His dominant wish, however, was to go a little longer without recognizing her. The woman's face floating in its dark seclusion, no name yet attached to it, had the character of a mysterious, lovely apparition. It was like the scent of the fragrant olive which, as one walks along a path at night, tells of the blossoms before one sees them. Isao wanted to keep things just as they were, if only for an instant more. At this moment a woman was a woman, not someone with a name attached to her.

And that was not all. Because of her hidden name, because of the agreement not to speak that name, she was transmuted into a marvelous essence, like a moonflower, its supporting vine invisible, floating high up in the darkness. This essence which preceded existence, this phantasm which preceded reality, this portent which preceded the event conveyed with unmistakable force the presence of a substance yet more powerful. This presence which showed itself as gliding through air - this was woman.

Isao had yet to embrace a woman. Still, never so strongly at this moment, when he keenly sensed this "womanliness that preceded woman," had he felt that he too knew what ecstasy meant. For this was a presence that he could even now embrace. In time, that is, it had drawn near with an exquisite subtlety, and in space it was only a little distant. The affectionate emotion that filled his breast was like a vapor that could envelop h ~ Yukio Mishima

A few blossoms float into the room. They drop like frayed yellow ribbons on the gray carpet. ~ Eileen Granfors

The work of preservation demands that the feelings playing about in one's guts not be turned into action. Just watch their passing like cherry blossoms. ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

It was a beautiful spring night, the air rain-washed and smelling of crushed blossoms, and Henry felt as if the muscles of his body were singing in unison. ~ Peter Swanson

Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law, and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Single-minded devotion engenders deep thought, which expresses itself in action. The Lord's Light descends on the devotee, His power awakens in him and, as a result, profound inner inquiry blossoms forth. ~ Anandamayi Ma

The Blossoms and leaves in plenty From the apple tree fall each day; The merry breezes approach them, And with them merrily play. ~ Heinrich Heine

Today, it is the scent of honeysuckle that takes me back in time and lays me down near a barn. I pick a honeysuckle blossom, touch the trumpet to my nose and inhale. With sticky filthy fingers, I pinch the base of its delicate well then lick the drop of nectar. The sweet liquid makes me thirst for more, and I reach for another and another, the same hands that reach again and again for tobacco as I string. I separate honeysuckle blossoms and taste. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

Earthly pride is like the passing flower, that springs to fall, and blossoms but to die. ~ Henry Kirke White

Tis not for golden eloquence I pray,
A godlike tongue to move a stony heart
Methinks it were full well to be apart
In solitary uplands far away,
Betwixt the blossoms of a rosy spray,
Dreaming upon the wonderful sweet face
Of Nature, in a wild and pathless place. ~ Frederick Tennyson

Unless you are here: this garden refuses to exist.
Pink dragonflies fall from the air
and become scorpions scratching blood out of rocks.
The rainbows that dangle upon this mist: shatter.
Like the smile of a child separated
from his mother's milk for the very first time.
from poem Blood and Blossoms ~ Aberjhani

Married when bees o'er
May blossoms flit,
Strangers around your
board will sit. ~ New Zealand Proverb

A goodbye at the gate," said Hobie. He seemed to be talking partly to himself. "That's what he would have wanted. The parting glimpse, the death haiku - he wouldn't have liked to leave without stopping to speak to someone along the way. 'A teahouse amid the cherry blossoms on the way to death. ~ Donna Tartt

She was practically an invalid ever after I could remember her, but used what strength she had in lavish care upon me and my sister, who was three years younger. There was a touch of mysticism and poetry in her nature which made her love to gaze at the purple sunsets and watch the evening stars. Whatever was grand and beautiful in form and color attracted her. It seemed as though the rich green tints of the foliage and the blossoms of the flowers came for her in the springtime, and in the autumn it was for her that the mountain sides were struck with crimson and with gold. ~ Calvin Coolidge

Before that first line of pale chalk, before the underdrawing fleshes out into shapes and proportions, there is a stab of grief for all the things she didn't get to paint. The finches wheeling in the rafters of the barn, Cornelis reading in the arbor, Tomas bent over in his roses in the flower garden, apple blossoms, walnuts beside oysters, Kathrijn in the full bloom of her short life, Barent sleeping in a field of lilacs, the Gypsies in the market, late-night revelers in the taverns…. Every work is a depiction and a lie. We rearrange the living, exaggerate the light, intimate dusk when it's really noonday sun. ~ Dominic Smith

I think,' said Lyndall, 'that he is like a thorn-tree, which grows up very quietly, without any one's caring for it, and one day suddenly breaks out into yellow blossoms. ~ Olive Schreiner

Even if he hadn't spent the past three years in the field and more than a decade before that studying for the priesthood, he would have felt a stranger among these students - the young men in brilliantly colored, intricately pleated coats that broadened shoulders and narrowed hips, the young women wasp-waisted and delicious in pale and shimmering fabrics the colors of peony blossoms and sherbet. ~ Mary Doria Russell

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

Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms. ~ Mark Twain

To different minds, poetry may present different phases. To me, the reverent faith of the people I lived among, and their faithful everyday living, was poetry; blossoms and trees and blue shies were poetry. God himself was poetry. ~ Lucy Larcom

Every lost color returned, one by one by one like cherry blossoms bursting to life in the spring, brighter and more vivid than ever before.
- pleasantville ii ~ Cyrus Parker

My African heritage is a part of reggae music roots, and the concept is that the album, 'Revelation Part 1: The Root of Life' is a tribute to roots reggae music. The fruit is what blossoms into different colors and shades, but the root has to stand predominant. ~ Stephen Marley

Mrs. Heath wanted to sprinkle their minds with grass seed and watch the blades spike up through the earth, flat and predictable as a golf course. She wanted dependable students, well fed but not necessarily nourished. But he was not in that category. Admittedly, he could not count on his perceptions of letters and words, and he was not always accurate. He misused words most when he liked their sound. A sentence had a kind of music, and the word sounded right. The definitions were never as interesting as the sound they made coming out of your mouth. He rolled their flavors around on his tongue, tasting every nook and cranny, but he could not be trusted to deliver the right answer and she would never give him better than a C, no matter what genius work he produced. The way he saw it, his mind was a big unruly field of wildflowers. One day he would shower the world with blossoms. ~ Elizabeth Brundage

You can't just make people fall in love, right? Love is way more complicated than that. It's not just a matter of choosing a couple of people and making them ask each other some questions, and then love blossoms. The moon and the stars are involved. I'm certain of it. ~ Nicola Yoon

Madam, a circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge; it blossoms through the year. And depend on it that they who are so fond of handling the leaves, will long for the fruit at last. ~ Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Today I will find something beautiful.
Delicate pink blossoms on a cherry tree.
The dove resting near the lemon buds.
Sunbeams smiling from sky to earth.
Smiling on me.
"Creating" in BREATHE IN ~ Eileen Granfors

Tristan grabs my chin and pulls it toward him and then we're ripping off our masks and kissing, his lips so soft and yet moving fiercely against mine. I wrap a hand around the back of his head, lace my fingers through his hair, breathe him in, kiss him back. My heart blossoms. ~ David Estes

Ghetto Haikus
Friendship needs just two.
Hot relationships needs three.
But bitches can't count.

Nigga don't need no
cherry blossoms to haiku.
Dis niggaz got skillz.

Any of yoos seen
Moesha or Latesha?
Bitches owe me cash.

Obama's whiter
than Spring laundry day at Duke's
house in Baton Rouge. ~ Beryl Dov

A too closely watched flower/blossoms the wrong color./Excess attention to the jonquil/turns it gentian. Flowers/need it tranquil to get/their hues right. Some/only open at midnight. ~ Kay Ryan

But memories are time beings, too, like cherry blossoms or ginkgo leaves; for a while they are beautiful, and then they fade and die. ~ Ruth Ozeki

A grower of chrysanthemums awaited a visit from the emperor, who was coming to enjoy his blossoms, of which there were hundreds in bloom. The grower selected one magnificent specimen, then cut down all the others, leaving this one perfect flower. The emperor arrived and sat for several hours quietly gazing at this beautiful flower, letting its beauty have its way with him. Can you imagine being so caught up in appreciation of one flower that everything else fades into the background? ~ John Templeton

Dig deep & pull the roots of confidence from the ground of your being, standing firm in the raging storm until sunlight blossoms inside you. ~ Curtis Tyrone Jones

The Sparrow Sisters' roses still bloomed on New Year's Day, their scent rich and warm even when snow weighted their petals closed. When customers came down the rutted road to the small eighteenth-century barn where the sisters worked, they marveled at the jasmine that twined through the split-rail fence, the perfume so intense they could feel it in their mouths. As they paid for their purchases, they wondered (vaguely, it must be said, for the people of Granite Point knew not to think too hard about the Sisters) how it was that clematis and honeysuckle climbed the barn in November and the morning glories bloomed all day. The fruit trees were so fecund that the peaches hung on the low branches, surrounded by more blossoms, apples and pears ripened in June and stayed sweet and fresh into December. Their Italian fig trees were heavy with purple teardrop fruit only weeks after they were planted. If you wanted a tomato so ripe the juice seemed to move beneath the skin, you needed only to pick up a punnet at the Nursery. ~ Ellen Herrick

A righteous government is of all the most to be wished for,Bearing of blessing and good fortune in the highest.Guided by the law of Truth, supported by dedication and zeal,It blossoms into the Best of Order, a Kingdom of Heaven!To effect this I shall work now and ever more. ~ Zoroaster

Prayer is the natural outgushing of a soul in communion with Jesus. Just as the leaf and the fruit will come out of the vine-branch without any conscious effort on the part of the branch, but simply because of its living union with the stem, so prayer buds, and blossoms, and fruits out of souls abiding in Jesus. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Evening Primrose

When once the sun sinks in the west,
And dewdrops pearl the evening's breast;
Almost as pale as moonbeams are,
Or its companionable star,
The evening primrose opes anew
Its delicate blossoms to the dew;
And, hermit-like, shunning the light,
Wastes its fair bloom upon the night,
Who, blindfold to its fond caresses,
Knows not the beauty it possesses;
Thus it blooms on while night is by;
When day looks out with open eye,
Bashed at the gaze it cannot shun,
It faints and withers and is gone. ~ John Clare

Chorus of Comforters

We are gardeners who have no flowers,
No herb may be transplanted
From yesterday to tomorrow.
The sage has faded in the cradles--
Rosemary lost its scent facing the new dead--
Even wormwood was only bitter yesterday.
The blossoms of comfort are too small
Not enough for the torment of a child's tear.

New seed may perhaps be gathered
In the heart of a nocturnal singer.
Which of us may comfort?
In the depth of the defile
Between yesterday and tomorrow
The cherub stands
Grinding the lightnings of sorrow with his wings
But his hands hold apart the rocks
Of yesterday and tomorrow
Like the edges of a wound

Which must remain open
That may not yet heal.

The lightnings of sorrow do not allow
The field of forgetting to fall asleep.

Which of us may comfort?

We are gardeners who have no flowers
And stand upon a shining star
And weep. ~ Nelly Sachs

What humanity should realize is that peace, joy, love and abundance cannot exist without the other. To bring one of these qualities into your life is to bring them all. Choose the one you want the most and grow it in your heart, nurture it until it blossoms into a beautiful flower ~ Monica Dumont

Self love is the seed from which inner peace, fulfilment and appreciation blossoms. ~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

You ask me why I dwell
amidst these jade-green hills?
I smile. No words can tell
the stillness in my heart.
Peach blossoms drift streamwater
away deep in mystery.
I live in the other world
one that lies beyond the human. ~ Li Bai

Innocence, a fleeting thing
Like the blossoms of the spring
Like the pretty butterfly
Dancing now, but soon to die.
Not for long that wondering gaze
All too soon those baby days -
Are gone. ~ Bernie Morris

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life? ~ Mary Oliver

By the time she had picked every visible corpse off her property, the heap included ants, beetles and cockroaches, different kinds of spiders, some bees, flies, a wasp, two fetid lizard skins and the brittle remains of their skeletons, six butterflies, a stick insect the length of her forearm, two dragonflies, a handful of crickets and other creatures that in the world of naming remained untitled. The collection measured a full hand deep. She paid no attention to the odour rising out of the bucket. The scent of decay was not offensive to her. It was the aroma of life refusing to end. It was the aroma of transformation. Such odour was proof that nothing truly ended, and she revelled in it as much as she did the cereus blossoms along the back wall of the house. ~ Shani Mootoo

She woke from dreamless rest to find her lap filled with wildflowers-blue and gold violets, white starworts with bright yellow centers, wild geraniums, purple heather, pale lavender bellflowers, creamy butterworts...a treasure trove of nature's jewels.
"Where did these come from?" she asked her warrior husband.
He leaned back on his elbows and studied the sea. "Some trolls came by and left them."
"Trolls picking flowers?"
"More believable, surely, than me doing it?"
She laughed and surprised him by competently weaving the summer's late blossoms into a garland for her hair.
"How is it you know how to do that," he asked, "when you are so thoroughly undomestic?"
She threw a purple aster at him and laughed again. "I thought I was managing to conceal that."
"Oh,certainly. ~ Josie Litton

I want you to know that finding God's grace laced through the seasons of your heart....

begins with RESTING in who HE is
builds by REHEARSING the truth He says about you
blossoms as we RESPOND in faith to those truths and
is sustained by REMEMBERING His provision ~ Ruth Chou Simons

A dialogue is very important. It is a form of communication in which question and answer continue till a question is left without an answer. Thus the question is suspended between the two persons involved in this answer and question. It is like a bud with untouched blossoms ... If the question is left totally untouched by thought, it then has its own answer because the questioner and answerer, as persons, have disappeared. This is a form of dialogue in which investigation reaches a certain point of intensity and depth, which then has a quality that thought can never reach. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

And what is sin?' said Cotgrave.
'I think I must reply to your question by another. What would your feelings be, seriously, if your cat or your dog began to talk to you, and to dispute with you in human accents? You would be overwhelmed with horror. I am sure of it. And if the roses in your garden sang a weird song, you would go mad. And suppose the stones in the road began to swell and grow before your eyes, and if the pebble that you noticed at night had shot out stony blossoms in the morning?
'Well, these examples may give you some notion of what sin really is. ~ Arthur Machen

Sea, autumnal sweetness, islands bathed in light, diaphanous cloak of delicate rainfall clothing Greece's eternal bareness. "Happy the person," I thought, "who is deemed worthy, before dying, to sail the Aegean." This world offers many pleasures: women, fruit, ideas. But I think no pleasure exists that plunges a person's heart into Paradise more than the joy of cutting across this sea on a gentle autumn day, murmuring the name of each island. Nowhere else are you transported from truth to dream with such serenity and ease. Boundaries fade; the mast of even the most dilapidated ship sprouts buds and grapes. Here in Greece, truly, necessity blossoms most certainly into miracle.

Kazantzakis, Nikos. Zorba the Greek (p. 23). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

As the spring comes on, and the densening outlines of the elm give daily a new design for a Grecian urn, - its hue, first brown with blossoms, then emerald with leaves, - we appreciate the vanishing beauty of the bare boughs. In our favored temperate zone, the trees denude themselves each year, like the goddesses before Paris, that we may see which unadorned loveliness is the fairest. ~ Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Indeed, everything that could hum, or buzz, or sing, or bloom had a part in my education
noisy-throated frogs, katydids and crickets held in my hand until, forgetting their embarrassment, they trilled their reedy note, little downy chickens and wildflowers, the dogwood blossoms, meadow-violets and budding fruit trees. I felt the bursting cotton-bolls and fingered their soft fiber and fuzzy seeds; I felt the low soughing of the wind through the cornstalks, the silky rustling of the long leaves, and the indignant snort of my pony ... ~ Helen Keller

What sorrow is like to the sorrow of one who is alone?
Once I dwelt in the company of the king I loved well,
And my arm was heavy with the weight of the rings he gave,
And my heart weighed down with the gold of his love.
The face the king is like the sun to those who surrounded,.
But now my heart is empty
And I wander along throughout the world.
The groves take on their blossoms,
The trees and meadows grow fair
But the cuckoo, saddest of singers,
Cries forth the only sorrow of the exile,
And now my heart hoes wandering,
In search of what I shall never see more;
All faces are alike to me if I cannot see the face of my king,
And all countries are alike to me
When I cannot see the fair fields and meadows of my home.
So I shall arise and follow my heart in its wandering
For what is the fair meadow of home to me
When I cannot see the face of my king
And the weight on my arm is but a band of gold
When the heart is empty of the weight of love.
And so I shall go roaming
Over the fishers' road
And the road of the great whale
And beyond the country of the wave
With none to bear me company
But the memory of those I loved
And the songs I sang out of a full heart,
And the cuckoo's cry in memory. ~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

Bees buzzed in the bean blossoms. And the sun beat down on the upturned shell of Om.
There is also a hell for tortoises.
He was too tired to waggle his That was all you could do, waggle your legs. And stick your head out as far as it would go and wave it about in the hope that you could lever yourself over. ~ Terry Pratchett

Blossoms shower, and then they go on showering - they never stop. The blossoms that showered for Buddha are still showering. The blossoms that showered for Subhuti are still showering. ~ Osho

So they took the blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden, the fairest and most graceful that man ever saw. And they baptized her, and gave her the name of Blodeuwedd. ~ Anonymous

A woman's spirit blossoms in the colors of her soul. ~ Laurel Burch

If I were asked to enumerate the pleasures of travel, this would be one of the greatest among them - that so often and so unexpectedly you meet the best in human nature, and seeing it so by surprise and often with a most improbable background, you come, with a sense of pleasant thankfulness, to realize how widely scattered in the world are goodness and courtesy and the love of immaterial things, fair blossoms found in every climate, on every soil. ~ Freya Stark

Tend your own garden: savor the blossoms, trim the weeds. ~ Ron Kaufman

A girl and a boy, sitting lazily cross-legged under a pale green willow, picking at the grass. She is lying with her head in his lap, long red hair fanned against his knee. Her skin is not my unnatural red but like honeyed cream. She grins up at him, his eyes the color of an evergreen forest, of dragonfly wings, his corn-gold, too-long hair falling over his forehead. And she laughs. When she does her back, her throat arches slightly, and he blushes. He smells of wheat fields and fallen autumn apples soft against the earth, and it is a smell she knows like her own. Under the filmy reed-curtain of the old willow tree, they hold hands and talk quietly, shoes discarded like peach pits. The sun is low in the sky, warm and orange-gold on their young faces, their strong white smiles and freshly washed hair. The light spills onto their shoulders like water from a well. There are sharp-smelling rosemary branches braided into her hair, with their little blue blossoms, and the oil is on their brown fingers. The boy whispers something in the girl's ear, and she closes her eyes, lashes smoking cheekbones like bundles of sage. ~ Catherynne M. Valente

To the north and south in the golden glow of a September twilight we saw the long line of the Outer Hebrides like the rocky backbone of some submerged continent. The scenes and colours on the land and ocean and in the sky seemed more like some magic vision, reflected from Faerie by the 'good people' for our delight, than a thing of our own world. Never was air clearer or sea calmer, nor could there be air sweeter than that in the mystic mountain-stillness holding the perfume of millions of tiny blossoms of purple and white heather; and as the last honey-bees were leaving the beautiful blossoms their humming came to our ears like low, strange music from Fairyland. ~ W.Y. Evans-Wentz

On the day the tree bloomed in the fall, when its white apple blossoms fell and covered the ground like snow, it was tradition for the Waverleys to gather in the garden like survivors of some great catastrophe, hugging one another, laughing as they touched faces and arms, making sure they were all okay, grateful to have gotten through it. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

The flower doesn't dream of the bee. It blossoms and the bee comes. ~ Mark Nepo

Ah, then, upon my bedroom I do draw
The blind to hide the garden, where the moon
Enjoys the open blossoms as they straw
Their beauty for his taking, boon for boon.
And I do lift my aching arms to you,
And I do lift my anguished, avid breast,
And I do weep for very pain of you,
And fling myself at the doors of sleep, for rest. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Nature does have manure and she does have roots as well as blossoms, and you can't hate the manure and blame the roots for not being blossoms. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Praise and esteem bring about skill where skill deserves comendation. When wisdom is adorned with praise it blossoms in profusion. ~ Gottfried Von Straßburg

I don't base my books on my life (thank goodness) and I don't pick the topic first. In fact, the topic picks me - via a question I can't answer as a mom, a wife, a woman, an American. I find myself wondering "What if ... " and it blossoms into a whole novel. ~ Jodi Picoult

A Woman's Question

Do you know you have asked for the costliest thing
Ever made by the Hand above?
A woman's heart, and a woman's life---
And a woman's wonderful love.

Do you know you have asked for this priceless thing
As a child might ask for a toy?
Demanding what others have died to win,
With a reckless dash of boy.

You have written my lesson of duty out,
Manlike, you have questioned me.
Now stand at the bars of my woman's soul
Until I shall question thee.

You require your mutton shall always be hot,
Your socks and your shirt be whole;
I require your heart be true as God's stars
And as pure as His heaven your soul.

You require a cook for your mutton and beef,
I require a far greater thing;
A seamstress you're wanting for socks and shirts---
I look for a man and a king.

A king for the beautiful realm called Home,
And a man that his Maker, God,
Shall look upon as He did on the first
And say: "It is very good."

I am fair and young, but the rose may fade
From this soft young cheek one day;
Will you love me then 'mid the falling leaves,
As you did 'mong the blossoms of May?

Is your heart an ocean so strong and true,
I may launch my all on its tide?
A loving woman finds heaven or hell
On the day she is made a bride.

I require all things that are grand and true,
Joshua Harris

Then my abuelita booms out words, loud and clear. She always says the words should be round as dimes and as wild as blossoms blooming. ~ Tony Johnston

Look at the cherry blossoms!
Their color and scent fall with them,
Are gone forever,
Yet mindless
The spring comes again. ~ Ikkyu

In the distance, I could see Skanda sitting on a pavilion wreathed in lotus blossoms and flanked with serving girls. He was, as I had guessed, fat. And in his golden jacket, he indeed looked like a toad.
"Ah, I remember him," muttered Kamala.
"He's my half-brother."
"Nasty, nasty."
"I know."
"Would you like me to eat him?"
"Definitely not," I said, a little too quickly. I patted Kamala's neck. "But I appreciate your offer. It was almost nice."
"It is nice to be nice," said Kamala with a sage nod. "And it is also nice to eat people," she added as an afterthought. ~ Roshani Chokshi

It is an excellent circumstance that hospitality grows best where it is most needed. In the thick of men it dwindles and disappears, life fruit in the thick of a wood; but where people are planted sparely it blossoms and matures, like apples on a standard or an espalier. It flourishes where the inn and lodging-house cannot exist. ~ Hugh Miller

Mala faced her wall of faded cereus blooms. She was content. Oblivious to the dew that drizzled from the mudra, she rocked and dozed lightly. Scent, as though too shy for light, no longer trickled from the blossoms but Mala was not yet ready to leave the yard. Her eyes would flicker open and catch a glimpse of the day that was beginning to split the black sky apart. In that first orange light the flowers hung limp, battered and bruised, each one worn out from the frenzied carnival of moths. (140) ~ Shani Mootoo

Sonnet V
I touch you as a lonely violin touches the suburbs of the faraway place
patiently the river asks for its share of the drizzle
and, bit by bit, a tomorrow passing in poems approaches
so I carry faraway's land and it carries me on travel's road
On a mare made of your virtues, my soul weaves
a natural sky made of your shadows, one chrysalis at a time.
I am the son of what you do in the earth, son of my wounds
that have lit up the pomegranate blossoms in your closed-up gardens
Out of jasmine the night's blood streams white. Your perfume,
my weakness and your secret, follows me like a snakebite. And your hair
is a tent of wind autumn in color. I walk along with speech
to the last of the words a bedouin told a pair of doves
I palpate you as a violin palpates the silk of the faraway time
and around me and you sprouts the grass of an ancient place - anew ~ Mahmoud Darwish

Believe it or not, Mexican cooking, for those of you who have not gone farther south than Taco Bell, uses a lot of vegetables. But those vegetables were not brought here, like corn mushrooms, huitlacoche, or squash blossoms. ~ Sandra Cisneros

They didn't believe in interfering with the child's imagination, and so when the Ada finished one of her many books and decided that she could talk to animals, no one corrected her. 'It did no harm to let her believe that,' Saul said, and the Ada continued to believe wildly, in Yshwa and fairies and pixies living in the flame of the forest blossoms. ~ Akwaeke Emezi

You must tune everything else out and create from your heart."
I nod, dipping my brush in red acrylic, then white, before mixing the paints on the palette until they form a perfect pink.
I paint a peony, and then another. I somehow recall a garden, far away from here, where there were (are?) peonies. I remember the way the blossoms are so heavy that they flounce over, and I reach for another brush and dip it into green to get the stems just right. ~ Sarah Jio

Drunk with beauty, I tore down Armfuls of blossoms. How desolate the marred sky! ~ Alison Croggon

When you touch the pain of the world as real, there is a solidarity, an engagement with the Gospel, a living faith that blossoms forth. ~ Simone Campbell

This time of year, the purple blooms were busy with life- not just the bees, but butterflies and ladybugs, skippers and emerald-toned beetles, flitting hummingbirds and sapphire dragonflies. The sun-warmed sweet haze of the blossoms filled the air.
"When I was a kid," said Isabel, "I used to capture butterflies, but I was afraid of the bees. I'm getting over that, though." The bees softly rose and hovered over the flowers, their steady hum oddly soothing. The quiet buzzing was the soundtrack of her girlhood summers. Even now, she could close her eyes and remember her walks with Bubbie, and how they would net a monarch or swallowtail butterfly, studying the creature in a big clear jar before setting it free again. They always set them free.
As she watched the activity in the hedge, a memory floated up from the past- Bubbie, gently explaining to Isabel why they needed to open the jar. "No creature should ever be trapped against its will," she used to say. "It will ruin itself, just trying to escape." As a survivor of a concentration camp, Bubbie only ever spoke of the experience in the most oblique of terms. ~ Susan Wiggs

Why are roses kept for their blossoms rather than shunned for their thorns? ~ J. Aleksandr Wootton

Poltinus the Platonist proves by means of the blossoms and leaves that from the Supreme God, whose beauty is invisible and ineffable, Providence reaches down to the things of earth here below. He points out that these frail and mortal objects could not be endowed with a beauty so immaculate and so exquisitely wrought, did they not issue from the Divinity which endlessly prevades with its invisible and unchanging beauty all things. ~ Saint Augustine

In the cherry blossom's shade there's no such thing as a stranger. ~ Kobayashi Issa

Influence often isn't noticed until it blossoms later in the garden of someone else's life. Our words and actions may land close to home, or they may be carried far and wide. ~ Elizabeth Price Foley

What's old collapses, times change, and new life blossoms in the ruins. ~ Friedrich Schiller

The roses bloomed, thousands of them in a floral amphitheater, blossoms shading from gold and coral at the top of the garden to scarlet and deep pink on tiers below. At the bottom, in the center of the rosy congregation, the palest apricots and ivories perfumed the air. ~ Allegra Goodman

we pass the fields of Perry and Madrone and where they make wine, and it's all there, all sweet the furrows of brown, with blossoms and one time we took a siding to wait for 98 and I ran out there like the hound of the Baskervilles and got me a few old prunes not longer fitten to eat - the propietor seeing me, trainman running guiltily back to engine with a stolen prune, always I was running, always was running, running to throw switches, running in my sleep and running now - happy. ~ Jack Kerouac

Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit."
"Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving ~ Kahlil Gibran

He was toxic, poison, and he was going to kill everything beautiful in my life if I let him. He was the storm to my cherry blossoms. This ~ L.J. Shen

Feelings I had for him had emerged suddenly, like the tight bud of a rose that blossoms magically overnight into a glorious colour. ~ Lucinda Riley

I walk where once the grass was green And mourn the lark that sings no more What bird could sing whose eyes have seen Broken blossoms on the field of war? ~ Tom Springfield

It was a vision of the one thing that we both hoped someday would be...the warmth of our bodies next to each other's, reflected in sunset of our secret place... We longed for it to be like this, each and every evening... Dancing in the night, playing hide-and-seek in the day, the beauty of our souls blossoms... Never before had we felt so happy, never before had we felt so alive... We hear the birds, sensing the cheerful breeze, the rainbow's end does linger here....our tenderness, sighs and spirits speak and we do know clear... This place is where love and laughter meet... You take my hand, kiss each finger tip, with tears in your eyes you touch my cheek and whisper of how wondrous this, we share our love once again. The love that gives us wings to fly anew. Our hearts in sweet pleasing pain beat as one in the rhythm of long forgotten yet melody... Together again at this wondrous place, where just our presence adds more grace and makes it what was meant to be - a place for you a place for me... ~ Oksana Rus

I always say that I went to the College of Blossoms and the University of Ray Charles. ~ Merry Clayton

I also learned that you didn't come onto this earth as a perfectionist or control freak. You weren't born a person of cringe and contraction. You were born as energy, as life, made of the same stuff as stars, blossoms, breezes. You learned contraction to survive, but that was then. You have paid through the nose-paid but good. It is now your turn to reap. ~ Anne Lamott

He felt something on his neck. Warmth.
He hesitated, then turned weary eyes toward the sky. Sunlight bathed his face. He gaped; it seemed so long since he'd seen pure sunlight. It shone down through a large break in the clouds, comforting, like the warmth of an oven baking a loaf of Adrinne's thick sourdough bread.
Almen stood, raising a hand to shade his eyes. He took a deep, long breath, and smelled… apple blossoms? He spun with a start.
The apple trees were flowering.
That was plain ridiculous. He rubbed his eyes, but that didn't dispel the image. They were blooming, all of them, white flowers breaking out between the leaves.
[...] What was happening? Apple trees didn't blossom twice. Was he going mad?
Footsteps sounded softly on the path that ran past the orchard. Almen spun to find a tall young man walking down out of the foothills. He had deep red hair and he wore ragged clothing: a brown cloak with loose sleeves and a simple white linen shirt beneath. The trousers were finer, black with a delicate embroidery of gold at the cuff.
"Ho, stranger," Almen said, raising a hand, not knowing what else to say, not even sure if he'd seen what he thought he'd seen. "Did you… did you get lost up in the foothills?"
The man stopped, turning sharply. He seemed surprised to find Almen there. With a start, Almen realized the man's left arm ended in a stump.
The stranger looked about, then breathed in deeply. "No. I'm not lost. Finally. It fe ~ Robert Jordan

My bridled soul leaps under the pressure of desires,
Chained i am by this organic-societal form from galloping free
My mind heaves me to safety,but heart is ready for doom...
An all knowing glance pierced deep through my skin
Smiling at my ailing and confused form,
Invading my senses, feeding them to the eternal fires... ~ Gayathri Jayakumar

he said this turning his strong body to face the beautiful, stunning, breathtaking, astonishing, bewildering girl who was a princess and his one true love, Eodwyn. she had hair like raven wings and skin like snow that the dogs haven't peed on yet and cheeks like cherry blossoms and eyes like a magnificent summer sky. ~ J.K. Ashton

He touches my bottom lip, leaving behind a smear of fruity glaze. He watches as I suck away the bittersweet residue, then he licks the rest of the glaze from his fingertip. At the appearance of his tongue, heat blossoms in my face.
He smirks. "Look at that. I revived the color in your cheeks." ~ A.G. Howard

Somewhere, a trucker reads alien letters carved into the bathroom stall walls of a truck stop. He cannot look away. Pathogens in the grammar open an event horizon in his head. He spreads the scrawl in every stop on his route, carving it into the stalls. he itches and he scratches. Others see the letters. They itch. They scratch. He scratches his face, draws the runes in red with his box knife. His head blossoms into a bouquet of writhing lampreys. ~ Joshua Alan Doetsch

Doesn't the world bring forth thinking in human heads with the same necessity that it brings forth blossoms on the plant? ~ Carl Jung