Daffodil Quotes

I wonder what spendthrift chose to spill
Such a bright gold under my windowsill!
Is it fair gold? Does it glitter still?
Bless me! It's a daffodil! ~ Celia Thaxter

Maddie took the top of her egg off. The hot bright yolk was like summer sun breaking through cloud. The first daffodil in the snow. A gold sovereign wrapped in a white silk handkerchief. She dipped her spoon in it and licked it. ~ Elizabeth Wein

O fateful flower beside the rill- The Daffodil, the daffodil! ~ Jean Ingelow

I suppose he could have changed," Neal said dryly. "I myself have noticed my growing resemblance to a daffodil." The other pages snorted.
Kel eyed her friend. "You do look yellow around the edges," she told him, her face quite serious. "I hadn't wanted to bring it up."
"We daffodils like to have things brought up," Neal said, slinging an arm around her shoulders. "It reminds us of spring. ~ Tamora Pierce

She glanced again at Caliban as she said, "You and Daffodil were very brave." "And the best part, Mama," Indio said, tugging her hand to get her attention, "the best part is Caliban spoke. Did you hear him? He shouted my name!" "What?" Lily stared at Indio's filthy little face and then back up at Caliban. She absently noted that he had a bleeding scratch on his cheek. That shout right before the accident - had that been him? ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

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. ~ William Wordsworth

'One Yellow Daffodil' is both a look to the past and to the future and expresses my belief in the great spirit and strength of our children. ~ David A. Adler

I'm as gay as a daffodil, my dear! ~ Freddie Mercury

Dogwoods are great optimists. Daffodils wait and see, crouching firmly underground just in case spring doesn't come this year, but dogwoods have faith. ~ Barbara Holland

I often advise young brides who are traveling during their first weeks or months of marriage to start "homemaking" in a hotel, even if they are there for only a night, rather than groaning about having to "wait so long to have a home". How? ... Your own cloth, your own candlestick, just one rose or daffodil is enough to make a difference ... You will be surprised how much difference it makes to have done something to make a room your home, even for one night. ~ Edith Schaeffer

Rincewind sighed. "Look," he said. "No self-respecting High Priest is going to go through all the business with the trumpets and the processions and the banners and everything, and then shove his knife into a daffodil and a couple of plums. You've got to face it, all this stuff about golden boughs and the cycles of nature and stuff just boils down to sex and violence, usually at the same time. ~ Terry Pratchett

Then my heart with pleasure fills And dances with the daffodils. ~ William Wordsworth

It is daffodil time, so the robins all cry, For the sun's a big daffodil up in the sky, And when down the midnight the owl call to-whoo! Why, then the round moon is a daffodil too; Now sheer to the bough-tops the sap starts to climb, So, merry my masters, it's daffodil time. ~ Clinton Scollard

Ten thousand saw I at a glance, tossing their heads in sprightly dance. ~ William Wordsworth

I myself have noticed my growing resemblance to a daffodil. ~ Tamora Pierce

If you wrap yourself in daffodils I will wrap myself in pain ~ Adam Duritz

I plant daffodil bulbs about eight inches deep. As I mentioned before, I don't use a ruler. As a married woman, I know perfectly well what six or eight inches looks like, so it's easy to make a good estimate. This mental measurement makes planting time much more interesting than it might be otherwise. ~ Cassandra Danz

In the first week of April the weather turned suddenly, unseasonably, insistently lovely. The sky was blue, the air warm and windless, and the sun beamed on the muddy ground with all the sweet impatience of June. Toward the fringe of the wood, the young trees were yellow with the first tinge of new leaves; woodpeckers laughed and drummed in the copses and, lying in bed with my window open, I could hear the rush and gurgle of the melted snow running in the gutters all night long.
In the second week of April everyone waited anxiously to see if the weather would hold. It did, with serene assurance. Hyacinth and daffodil bloomed in the flower beds, violet and periwinkle in the meadows; damp, bedraggled white butterflies fluttered drunkenly in the hedgerows. I put away my winter coat and overshoes and walked around, nearly light-headed with joy, in my shirtsleeves. ~ Donna Tartt

I was in the forest jumping around daffodils while everyone was high on heroin. ~ Rufus Wainwright

Maude was still scowling. "What's wrong with him? Can't he talk?" "No, he can't," Indio said simply, saving Apollo from having to do his dumb show. "Oh." Maude blinked, obviously taken aback. "Has he had his tongue cut out?" "Maude!" Miss Stump cried. "What a horrible thought. He has a tongue." Her brows knit as if from sudden doubt and she peered worriedly at Apollo. "Don't you?" He didn't even bother resisting the urge. He stuck out his tongue at her. Indio laughed and Daffodil began barking again - obviously her first reaction to nearly everything. Miss Stump stared at Apollo for a long second and he was aware that his body was heating. Carefully he withdrew his tongue and snapped his mouth shut, giving her his most uncomprehending face. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

Depression is to me as daffodils were to Wordsworth. ~ Philip Larkin

It's not that he doesn't appreciate beauty, he just appreciates it in his own way. I mean, if a poet sees a daffodil he stares at it and writes a long poem about it, but Twoflower wanders off to find a book on botany. ~ Terry Pratchett

April Rain It is not raining rain to me, It's raining daffodils; In every dimpled drop I see Wild flowers on the hills. The clouds of gray engulf the day And overwhelm the town; It is not raining rain to me, It's raining roses down. It is not raining rain to me, But fields of clover bloom, Where any buccaneering bee May find a bed and room. A health unto the happy! A fig for him who frets!- It is not raining rain to me, It's raining violets. ~ Robert Loveman

I mean, if a poet sees a daffodil he stares at it and writes a long poem about it, but Twoflower wanders off to find a book on botany. And treads on it. Then ~ Terry Pratchett

FREEDOM IS THE FRAGILE NECK of a daffodil, after the longest of winters. ~ Jodi Picoult

The fading dawn colors revive momentarily, and the sky shines with lilac and daffodil, layering colors in clouds like quilts stacked on a bed. More birds chime into the morning air: a nuthatch's nasal onk joins the crow's croak and a black-throated green warbler's murmur from the branches above the mandala. As the colors finally fade under the fierce gaze of their mother, the sun, a wood thrush caps the dawn chorus with his astounding song. The song seems to pierce through from another world, carrying with it clarity and ease, purifying me for a few moments with its grace. Then the song is gone, the veil closes, and I am left with embers of memory. ~ David George Haskell

One of the joys our technological civilization has lost is the excitement with which seasonal flowers and fruits were welcomed; the first daffodil, strawberry or cherry are now things of the past, along with their precious moment of arrival. Even the tangerine
now a satsuma or clementine
appears de-pipped months before Christmas. ~ Derek Jarman

Young playmates of the rose and daffodil, Be careful ere ye enter in, to fill Your baskets high With fennel green, and balm, and golden pines Savory latter-mint, and columbines. ~ John Keats

When daffodils begin to peer,
With heigh! the doxy, over the dale,
Why, then comes in the sweet o' the year;
For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale.
The white sheet bleaching on the hedge,
With heigh! the sweet birds, O, how they sing!
Doth set my pugging tooth on edge;
For a quart of ale is a dish for a king. ~ William Shakespeare

Before the swallow, before the daffodil, and not much later than the snowdrop, the common toad salutes the coming of spring after his own fashion, which is to emerge from a hole in the ground, where he has lain buried since the previous autumn, and crawl as rapidly as possible towards the nearest suitable patch of water. Something – some kind of shudder in the earth, or perhaps merely a rise of a few degrees in the temperature – has told him it is time to wake up ... At this period, after his long fast, the toad has a very spiritual look, like a strict Anglo-Catholic towards the end of Lent. His movements are languid but purposeful, his body is shrunken, and by contrast his eyes look abnormally large. This allows one to notice, what one might not at any other time, that a toad has about the most beautiful eye of any living creature. It is like gold, or more exactly it is like the golden-coloured semi-precious stone which one sometimes sees in signet rings, and which I think is called a chrysoberyl. ~ George Orwell

For oft, when on my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood they flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude ~ William Wordsworth

Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth. ~ Philip Larkin

A daffodil bulb will divide and redivide endlessly. That's why, like the peony, it is one of the few flowers you can find around abandoned farmhouses, still blooming and increasing in numbers fifty years after the farmer and his wife have moved to heaven, or the other place, Boca Raton. If you dig up a clump when no one is nearby and there is no danger of being shot, you'll find that there are scores of little bulbs in each clump, the progeny of a dozen or so planted by the farmer's wife in 1942. If you take these home, separate them, and plant them in your own yard, within a couple of years, you'll have a hundred daffodils for the mere price of a trespassing fine or imprisonment or both. I had this adventure once, and I consider it one of the great cheap thrills of my gardening career. I am not advocating trespassing, especially on my property, but there is no law against having a shovel in the trunk of your car. ~ Cassandra Danz

You've developed the strength of a draft horse while holding onto the delicacy of a daffodil ... you are the mother, advocate and protector of a child with a disability. ~ Lori Borgman

I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones about and above them; some rested their heads upon these stones, as on a pillow, for weariness ... ~ Dorothy Wordsworth

Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries. ~ T. S. Eliot

Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat, night, has flown Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone: And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the musk of the rose is blown. For a breeze of morning moves, And the planet of Love is on high, Beginning to faint in the light that she loves On a bed of daffodil sky. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

The long, green, seaward-looking glen was filled with
dusk, and beyond it were meadows of sunset. The harbour was radiant, purple here, azure there, opal elsewhere. The maple grove was beginning to be misty green. Rilla looked about her with wistful eyes. Who said that spring was the joy of the year? It was the heart-break of the year. And the pale-purply mornings and the daffodil stars and the wind in the old pine were so many separate pangs of the heart-break. Would life ever be free from dread again? ~ L.M. Montgomery

In the garden, Autumn is, indeed the crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought and care and toil. And at no season, safe perhaps in Daffodil time, do we get such superb colour effects as from August to November. ~ George Eliot

Morning, Mr. Nick." "My, don't you look dapper." He looked to find Lilly in the doorway. "And doesn't your mama look pretty as a daisy." "Not daisy. Daffodil." Levi hopped down the steps. "That's her favorite flower, but her dress is green, so I guess she's pretty as a toad." Nick chuckled. "Only you would think toads are pretty." "Toads ~ Lorna Seilstad

They wore their hair long like a poet who hopes that romantically flowing locks will make up for a wretched inability to find a rhyme for daffodil. ~ Terry Pratchett

The Mania Speaks


You clumsy bootlegger. Little daffodil.
I watered you with an ocean and you plucked one little vein?
Downed a couple bottles of pills and got yourself carted off to the ER?
I gifted you the will of gunpowder, a matchstick tongue, and all you managed
was a shredded sweater and a police warning?
You should be legend by now.
Girl in an orange jumpsuit, a headline.
I built you from the purest napalm, fed you wine and bourbon.
Preened you in the dark, hammered lullabies into your thin skull.
I painted over the walls, wrote the poems. I shook your goddamn boots.
Now you want out? Think you'll wrestle me out of you with prescriptions?
A good man's good love and some breathing exercises?
You think I can't tame that? I always come home. Always.
Ravenous. Loaded. You know better than anybody:
I'm bigger than God. ~ Jeanann Verlee

To this day I cannot see a bright daffodil, a proud gladiola, or a smooth eggplant without thinking of Papa. Like his plants and trees, I grew up as a part of his garden. ~ Leo Buscaglia

Rome Archer, if you don't wake up right this second so I can tell you that I love you, I swear I'm going to name this baby something ridiculous like Daffodil or Rover and I'm going to let your brother be in charge of haircuts until he or she is old enough to complain. ~ Jay Crownover

In a world lost in delusion, a single daffodil quietly announces the arrival of spring. ~ Meeta Ahluwalia

Life is the greatest gift that could ever be conceived ... A daffodil pushing up through the dark earth to the spring, knowing somehow deep in its roots that spring and light and sunshine will come, has more courage and more knowledge of the value of life than any human being I've met. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days. ~ Alain De Botton

The key of D is daffodil yellow, B major is maroon, and B flat is blue. ~ Marian McPartland

Then said Fate to Chance: "Let us play our old game again." And they played it again together, using the gods as pieces, as they had played it oft before. So that those things which have been shall all be again, and under the same bank in the same land a sudden glare of singlight on the same spring day shall bring the same daffodil to bloom once more and the same child shall pick it, and not regretted shall be the billion years that fell between. And the same old faces shall be seen again, yet not bereaved of their familiar haunts. And you and I shall in a garden meet again upon an afternoon in summer when the sun stands midway between his zenith and the sea, where we met oft before. For Fate and Chance play but one game together with every move the same, and they play it oft to while eternity away. ~ Lord Dunsany

Whoever you are. Where ever you are. With whom so ever you are & were. Whatever may be your past. What so ever may be the truth. I will wait for you & I will fade away just like a daffodil when storm comes. ~ Srinivas Shenoy

Daffodils are yellow trumpets of spring ~ Richard L. Ratliff