Flowers Quotes

The drought was the very worst when the flowers that we'd grown together died of thirst. ~ Taylor Swift

Looking at morning dew serenading on the petals of flowers is an ecstatic moment! This makes us realise that it is the simple pleasures of life that give us the most happiness! ~ Avijeet Das

Only the middle distance and what may be called the remoter foreground are strictly human. When we look very near or very far, man either vanishes altogether or loses his primacy. The astronomer looks even further afield than the Sung painter and sees even less of human life. At the other end of the scale the physicist, the chemist, the physiologist pursue the close-up – the cellular close-up, the molecular, the atomic and subatomic. Of that which, at twenty feet, even at arm's length, looked and sounded like a human being no trace remains.
Something analogous happens to the myopic artist and the happy lover. In the nuptial embrace personality is melted down; the individual (it is the recurrent theme of Lawrence's poems and novels) ceases to be himself and becomes a part of the vast impersonal universe.
And so it is with the artist who chooses to use his eyes at the near point. In his work humanity loses its importance, even disappears completely. Instead of men and women playing their fantastic tricks before high heaven, we are asked to consider the lilies, to meditate on the unearthly beauty of 'mere things,' when isolated from their utilitarian context and rendered as they are, in and for themselves. Alternatively (or, at an earlier stage of artistic development, exclusively), the nonhuman world of the near-point is rendered in patterns. These patterns are abstracted for the most part from leaves and flowers – the rose, the lotus, the acanthus, palm, papyrus – an ~ Aldous Huxley

Witnessing can be called the seed and enlightenment can be called the flowers. But begin from witnessing, and then it starts growing. Go on nourishing it, go on caring for it, go on watering it, strengthen it in every possible way - and one day it is going to blossom. That day will be the greatest day of your life. ~ Rajneesh

Bees and butterflies, moths and dragonflies, the flowers and the brooks and the clouds. ~ George MacDonald

For Mersault, nothing mattered in those days. And the first time Marthe went limp in his arms and her features blurred as they came closer - the lips that had been as motionless as painted flowers now quivering and extended - Mersault saw in her not the future but all the force of his desire focused upon her and and satisfied by this appearance, this image. The lips she offered him seemed a message from a world without passion and swollen with desire, where his heart would find satisfaction. And this seemed a miracle to him. His heard pounded with an emotion he almost took for love. And when he felt the ripe and resilient flesh under his teeth, it was as though he bit into a kind of fierce liberty, after caressing her a long time with his own lips. She became his mistress that same day. ~ Albert Camus

No, we never did go back anywhere. Not to Heidelberg, not to Hamelin, not to Verona, not to Mont Majour - not so much as to Carcassonne itself. We talked of it, of course, but I guess Florence got all she wanted out of one look at a place. She had the seeing eye. I haven't, unfortunately, so that the world is full of places to which I want to return - towns with the blinding white sun upon them; stone pines against the blue of the sky; corners of gables, all carved and painted with stags and scarlet flowers and crow-stepped gables with the little saint at the top; and grey and pink palazzi and walled towns a mile or so back from the sea, on the Mediterranean, between Leghorn and Naples. ~ Ford Madox Ford

Magical morning lights, dreamy sky,
Smiling flowers letting us know summer is opening her eyes ~ Debasish Mridha

The various objects for the decoration of a room should be so selected that no colour or design shall be repeated. If you have a living flower, a painting of flowers is not allowable. If you are using a round kettle, the water pitcher should be angular. A cup with a black glaze should not be associated with a tea-caddy of black lacquer. In placing a vase of an incense burner on the tokonoma, care should be taken not to put it in the exact centre, lest it divide the space into equal halves. The pillar of the tokonoma should be of a different kind of wood from the other pillars, in order to break any suggestion of monotony in the room. ~ Okakura Kakuzo

The new politicians resembled hyenas and foxes. In both hemispheres, the people quickly forgot. Compassion and rage shared the fate of autumn flowers, upon which settles hoarfrost: they had faded, withered, then died under the weight of rent, prices, inflation, soap operas and talk shows, family life, victories and defeats in stadiums. ~ Filip Florian

The source of all abundance is not outside you. It is part of who you are. However, start by acknowledging and recognizing abundance without. See the fullness of life all around you. The warmth of the sun on your skin, the display of magnificent flowers outside a florist's shop, biting into a succulent fruit, or getting soaked in an abundance of water falling from the sky. The fullness of life is there at every step. The acknowledgment of that abundance that is all around you awakens the dormant abundance within. Then let it flow out. When you smile at a stranger, there is already a minute outflow of energy. ~ Eckhart Tolle

May flowers smell their scent! ~ Hakan

I would regard meanings
given by others so far
as refreshing boon,
I would still be enamoured of rose
or any heartless flower's smell
if tender tides of your affection
had not suffused
the pollens of my heart
with loving aroma. ~ Suman Pokhrel

Perhaps you have visited my grave and flowers left, but did you hear me cry out to you! ~ Nancy B. Brewer

Flowers are words even a baby can understand. ~ Quentin Crisp

God scatters beauty as he scatters flowers O'er the wide earth, and tells us all are ours. A hundred lights in every temple burn, And at each shrine I bend my knee in turn. ~ Walter Savage Landor

Up in Illinois, we've forgotten what it's all about. I mean the dead, up in our town, tonight, heck, they're forgotten. Nobody goes to sit and talk to them. Boy, that's lonely. That's really sad. But here-- why, shucks. It's both happy and sad. It's all firecrackers and skeleton toys down here in the plaza and up in that graveyard now are all the Mexican dead folks with the families visiting and flowers and candles and singing and candy. I mean it's almost like Thanksgiving, huh? And everyone set down to dinner, but only half the people able to eat, but that's no mind, they're THERE. It's like holding hands at a séance with your friends, but some of the friends gone. ~ Ray Bradbury

And so a greater share of the night, Laura shed tears into her soft white pillow. Some of them were for old Oscar Lutz.... Some of them were for the general sad fact that hours fly and flowers die. But most of them were shed because of her own sudden and definite realization that even though there come new days and new ways,--love stays. ~ Bess Streeter Aldrich

The flowers of the forest are a' wide awae. ~ Jane Elliott

Already it is twilight down in the Laredito. Bats fly forth from their roostings in courthouse and tower and circle the quarter. The air is full of the smell of burning charcoal. Children and dogs squat by the mud stoops and gamecocks flap and settle in the branches of the fruit trees. They go afoot, these comrades, down along a bare adobe wall. Band music carries dimly from the square. They pass a watercart in the street and they pass a hole in the wall where by the light of a small forgefire an old man beats out shapes of metal. They pass in a doorway a young girl whose beauty becomes the flowers about.

They arrive at last before a wooden door. It is hinged into a larger door or gate and all must step over the foot-high sill where a thousand boots have scuffled away the wood, where fools in their hundreds have tripped or fallen or tottered drunkenly into the street. They pass along a ramada in a courtyard by an old grape arbor where small fowl nod in the dusk among the gnarled and barren vines and they enter a cantina where the lamps are lit and they cross stooping under a low beam to a bar and belly up one two three.

There is an old disordered Mennonite in this place and he turns to study them. A thin man in a leather weskit, a black and straightbrim hat set square on his head, a thin rim of whiskers. The recruits order glasses of whiskey and drink them down and order more. There are monte games at tables by the wall and there are whores at another ~ Cormac McCarthy

You mustn't rely on your flowers to make your garden attractive. A good bone structure must come first, with an intelligent use of evergreen plants so that the garden is always clothed, no matter what time of year. Flowers are an added delight, but a good garden is the garden you enjoy looking at even in the depths of winter. ~ Margery Fish

My dream is for my flowers to act as beacons and rallying points across the planet - bringing people together on a global scale and through my art start a global conversation. ~ Ana Tzarev

The trouble is, when you gift a girl with flowers your choice can be construed so many different ways. A man might give you a rose because he feels you are beautiful, or because he fancies their shade or shape or softness similar to your lips. Roses are expensive, and perhaps he wishes to show through a valuable gift that you are valuable to him.
When a man gives you a rose what you see may not be what he intends. You may think he sees you as delicate or frail. Perhaps you dislike a suitor who considers you sweet and nothing else. Perhaps the stem is thorn, and you assume he thinks you likely to hurt a hand too quick to touch. But if he trims the thorns you might think he has no liking for a thing that can defend itself with sharpness. There's so many ways a thing can be interpreted. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content. No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of the spring: no man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source and from the mouth of the Nile. ~ Samuel Johnson

Fair are the flowers and the children, but their subtle suggestion is fairer;
Rarer is the roseburst of dawn, but the secret that clasps it rarer;
Sweet the exultance of song, but the strain that precedes it is sweeter
And never was poem yet writ, but the meaning outmastered the meter. ~ Richard Realf

Native Soil

There's
Nobody simpler than us, or with
more pride, or fewer tears.
(1922)

Our hearts don't wear it as an amulet,
it doesn't sob beneath the poet's hand,
nor irritate the wounds we can't forget
in our bitter sleep. It's not the Promised Land.
Our souls don't calculate its worth
as a commodity to be sold and bought;
sick, and poor, and silent on this earth,
often we don't give it a thought.
Yes, for us it's the dirt on our galoshes,
yes, for us it's the grit between our teeth.
Dust, and we grind and crumble and crush it,
the gentle and unimplicated earth.
But we'll lie in it, become its weeds and flowers,
so unembarrassedly we call it - ours. ~ Anna Akhmatova

The room held her scent, that elusive fragrance that sometimes reminded him of spring flowers and other times made him think of summer afternoons and ripe peaches. Gracie seemed to be part of all the seasons. The warm glints of autumn shone in her hair, the clear light of winter sun sparkled in those intelligent gray eyes. He had to keep reminding himself that she wasn't a U.S.D.A. prime-cut female because lately he'd had a tendency to forget. It was just . . .

She was so damned cute. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

I lowered my hands to try to save from disorder the arrangement of the tleaves and flowers; meanwhile, she was also dealing with the branches, leaning forward; and so it happened that at the very moment when one of my hands slipped in confusion between Madame Miyagi's kimono and her bare skin and found itself clasping a soft and warm breast, elongated in form, one of the lady's hands, from among the branches keiyaki [translator's note: in Europe called Caucasian elm], had reached my member and was holding it in a firm, frank grasp, drawing it from my garments as if she were performing the operation of stripping away leaves. ~ Italo Calvino

Union with God is not something we acquire by a technique but the grounding truth of our lives that engenders the very search for God. Because God is the ground of our being, the relationship between creature and Creator is such that, by sheer grace, separation is not possible. God does not know how to be absent. The fact that most of us experience throughout most of our lives a sense of absence or distance from God is the great illusion that we are caught up in; it is the human condition. The sense of separation from God is real, but the meeting of stillness reveals that this perceived separation does not have the last word.

This illusion of separation is generated by the mind and is sustained by the riveting of our attention to the interior soap opera, the constant chatter of the cocktail party going on in our heads. For most of us this is what normal is, and we are good at coming up with ways of coping with this perceived separation (our consumer-driven entertainment culture takes care of much of it). But some of us are not so good at coping, and so we drink ourselves into oblivion or cut or burn ourselves "so that the pain will be in a different place and on the outside."

The grace of salvation, the grace of Christian wholeness that flowers in silence, dispels this illusion of separation. For when the mind is brought to stillness, and all our strategies of acquisition have dropped, a deeper truth presents itself: we are and have always been one wit ~ Martin Laird

The Flowers
All the names I know from nurse:
Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse,
Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,
And the Lady Hollyhock.
Fairy places, fairy things,
Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
Tiny trees for tiny dames
These must all be fairy names!
Tiny woods below whose boughs
Shady fairies weave a house;
Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,
Where the braver fairies climb!
Fair are grown-up people's trees,
But the fairest woods are these;
Where, if I were not so tall,
I should live for good and all ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Enron's president, Ken Lay, passed away last week. So, I guess even God lost money on that Enron deal. I believe the official cause of death was listed as "karma." The family asked in lieu of flowers, please send some elderly retiree's entire life savings. ~ Jay Leno

We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us - and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject. - How beautiful are the retired flowers! how would they lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway crying out, "admire me I am a violet! dote upon me I am a primrose!" ~ John Keats

The Gentle Gardener
I'd like to leave but daffodils to mark my little way,
To leave but tulips red and white behind me as I stray;
I'd like to pass away from earth and feel I'd left behind
But roses and forget-me-nots for all who come to find.
I'd like to sow the barren spots with all the flowers of earth,
To leave a path where those who come should find but gentle mirth;
And when at last I'm called upon to join the heavenly throng
I'd like to feel along my way I'd left no sign of wrong.
And yet the cares are many and the hours of toil are few;
There is not time enough on earth for all I'd like to do;
But, having lived and having toiled, I'd like the world to find
Some little touch of beauty that my soul had left behind. ~ Edgar A. Guest

We liked to be known as the clever girls. When we decorated our hands with henna for holidays and weddings, we drew calculus and chemical formulae instead of flowers and butterflies. ~ Malala Yousafzai

Is there a relative value of beauty? Is evanescence - fleetingness - a necessary element of the thing that most moves us? A shooting star dazzles more than the sun. A child captivates like an elf, but grows into grossness, an ogre, a harpy. A flower splays itself into color - the lilies of the field! - more treasured than any painting of a flower. But of all these things, women's grace, shooting stars, flowers, and paintings, only a painting endures. ~ Gregory Maguire

All the shall stand about the God of glory, the fountain of love, as it were opening their bosoms to be filled with those effusions of love which are poured forth from thence, as the flowers on the earth in a pleasant spring day open their bosoms to the sun to be filled with his warmth and light, and to flourish in beauty and fragrancy by his rays. Every saint is as a flower in the garden of God, and holy love is the fragrancy and sweet odor which they all send forth, with which they fill that paradise. ~ Jonathan Edwards

The shelves had the melancholy emptiness and the false luxury of families where inferior meat is purchased, so as to be able to put flowers on the table. ~ Emile Zola

You have a minute and a half left."
"Fine," she snapped. "Then I'll reduce this conversation to one single fact. Today I had six callers. Six! Can you recall the last time I had six callers?"
Anthony just stared at her blankly.
"I can't," Daphne continued, in fine form now. "Because it has never happened. Six men marched up our steps, knocked on our door, and gave Humboldt their cards. Six men brought me flowers, engaged me in conversation, and one even recited poetry."
Simon winced.
"And do you know why?" she demanded, her voice rising dangerously. "Do you?"
Anthony, in his somewhat belatedly arrived wisdom, held his tongue.
"It is all because he" - she jabbed her forefinger toward Simon - "was kind enough to feign interest in me last night at Lady Danbury's ball. ~ Julia Quinn

Love doesn't always come barreling down on you like a train engine. Sometimes it sneaks up on you like spring overtaking winter. The chill winds begin to warm and suddenly the trees have leaves and the flowers are blooming. ~ Ann H. Gabhart

Bottom line, when someone defensively says their way of writing is their style, then that usually means they're making an excuse for poor prose. ~ A.J. Flowers

Sometimes all it takes is a little watering everyday and a sunny day to follow, that's how weeds become flowers and new dawns rise - why would it be any less then for a human life? ~ Nikki Rowe

I realized I was tired of singing about trees and flowers. I wanted to sing about real life. From then on, nobody could tell me anything was better than blues. ~ Robert Cray

As I work among my flowers, I find myself talking to them, reasoning and remonstrating with them, and adoring them as if they were human beings. Much laughter I provoke among my friends by so doing, but that is of no consequence. We are on such good terms, my flowers and I. ~ Celia Thaxter

We replanted. The loss was substantial, but it was overshadowed completely by losing you. ~ Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Beneath the light, the river and hills are beautiful, The spring breeze bears the fragrance of flowers and grass. The mud has thawed, and swallows fly around. On the warm sand, mandarin ducks are sleeping. ~ Du Fu

When one is total, life flowers - and that flowering is spirituality. Spirituality is not an attitude, it is not a discipline. It is an outcome of a life lived totally, joyfully, delightfully; of a life of no complaint; of a life lived courageously, intensely. Then this flowering happens. ~ Rajneesh

evening harmony

behold the times when trembling on their stems
the flowers evaporate like thuribles
the sounds and scents turn in the evening cool;
sad waltz, languid intoxication!

the flowers evaporate like thuribles
the viol quivers like a heart that's torn
sad waltz, languid intoxication!
the sky is sad like some memorial.

the viol quivers like a heart that's torn
a heart that hates the void perpetual!
the sky is sad like some memorial
the sun has drowned in it's vermillion

a heart that hates the void perpetual
recalls each glowing moment of times gone!
the sun has drowned in it's vermillion;

your memory shines my monstrance personal ~ Charles Baudelaire

Linneaus imagined his clock of flowers. Ours is a calendar of delicately shifting endocrine levels. ~ Sarah Robinson

Jay showed up after school with a bouquet of flowers and an armful of DVDs, although Violet couldn't have cared less about either . . . he was all she wanted. She couldn't help the electric thrill of excitement she felt when he came strolling in, grinning at her foolishly as if he hadn't seen her in weeks rather than hours. He scooped her up from the couch and dropped her onto his lap as he sat down where she had been just a moment before. He was careful to arrange her ankle on a neatly stacked pile of pillows beside him.
He stubbornly refused to hide his affection for her, and if Violet hadn't known better she would have sword that he was going out of his way to make her self-conscious in her own home. Fortunately her parents were giving them some space for the time being, and they were left by themselves most of the time.
"Did you miss me?" he asked arrogantly as he gently brushed his lips over hers, not bothering to wait for an answer.
She smiled while she kissed him back, loving the topsy-turvy feeling that her stomach always got when he was so close to her. She wound her arms around his neck, forgetting that she was in the middle of the family room and not hidden away in the privacy of her bedroom.
He pulled away from her, suddenly serious. "You know, we didn't get much time alone yesterday. And I didn't get a chance to tell you . . ."
Violet was mesmerized by the thick timbre of his deep voice. She barely heard his words but rather concentrated ~ Kimberly Derting

He domesticated and developed the native wild flowers. He had one hill-side solidly clad with that low-growing purple verbena which mats over the hills of New Mexico. It was like a great violet velvet mantle thrown down in the sun; all the shades that the dyers and weavers of Italy and France strove for through centuries, the violet that is full of rose colour and is yet not lavender; the blue that becomes almost pink and then retreats again into sea-dark purple - the true Episcopal colour and countless variations of it. ~ Willa Cather

Trying to plan for the future without knowing the past is like trying to plant cut flowers. ~ David Boorstin

Shakespeare will not allow Falstaff to die upon stage. We see and hear the deaths of Hamlet, Cleopatra, Antony, Othello, and Lear. Iago is led away to die silently under torture. Macbeth dies offstage but he goes down fighting. Falstaff dies singing the Twenty-third Psalm, smiling upon his fingertips, playing with flowers, and crying aloud to God three or four times. That sounds more like pain than prayer.
We do not want Sir John Falstaff to die. And of course he does not. He is life itself. ~ Harold Bloom

There is no elegance or character of any sort in [the forsythia's] structure. Its crude expose of colour is undiluted by foliage. And in its most popular cultivars the flowers are packed into such congested lumps that it is like being asked to swallow a helping of cornflour pudding. ~ Christopher Lloyd

I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers. ~ Cynthia Hand

isn't it
breathtakingly beautiful
how you've learned
to grow flowers
from the memories
that died
a long time ago ~ Noor Unnahar

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords. ~ John Muir

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields To wayward winter reckoning yields; A honey tongue, a heart of gall, Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall. ~ Walter Raleigh

Dance, ballerina, dance
And do your pirouette in rhythm with your achin' heart. ~ Nat Cole King

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

Listen to me," Jordan begged urgently, somehow convinced that she would stay alive if she understood how much she meant to him. "Listen to what my life was like before you hurtled into it wearing that suit of armor - Life was empty. Colorless. And then you happened to me, and suddenly I felt feelings I never believed existed, and I saw things I'd never seen before. You don't believe that, do you, darling? But it's true, and I can prove it." His deep voice ragged with unshed tears, Jordan recited his proof: "The flowers in the meadow are blue," he told her brokenly. "The ones by the stream are white. And on the arch, by the arbor, the roses are red."

Lifting her hand to his face, he rubbed his cheek against it. "And that's not all I noticed. I noticed that the clearing by the pavilion - the one where my plaque is - looks like the very same one where we had our duel a year ago. Oh, and darling, there's something else I have to tell you: I love you, Alexandra."

Tears choked his voice and made it a tormented whisper. "I love you, and if you die I'll never be able to tell you that. ~ Judith McNaught

How glad I am that spring has come, and how it calms my mind when wearied with study to walk out in the green fields and beside the pleasant streams in which South Hadley is rich! ... The older I grow, the more do I love spring and spring flowers. Is it not so with you? (May 16, 1848 to Abiah Root) ~ Emily Dickinson

The sweetest souls, like the sweetest flowers, soon canker in cities, and no purity is rarer there than the purity of delight. ~ Walter Savage Landor

[Hers] was an existence between heaven and earth ... beyond her
stretched as far as the eye could see ... an immense space of joys and
passions ... [But] did not love, like flowers, need a special soil, a
particular temperature? Sighs by moonlight, long embraces, tears cried into yielding hands ... the fevers of the flesh and the langours of tenderness ... ~ Gustave Flaubert

Do not spend the day in gathering flowers by the way side, lest night come upon you before you arrive at your journey's end, and then you will not reach it. ~ Isaac Watts

Looking at a first assembly is kind of like looking at an overgrown garden. You can't just wade in with a weed whacker; you don't yet know where the stems of the flowers are. ~ Walter Murch

Shocked?" Juliet queried, the light pink tint on her cheeks the only telling sign of her discomfort with the conversation.
He nodded. "Yes. I had no idea my little girl knew what fluffies were."
Juliet opened her mouth to respond but was cut off by more misguided innocence from Kate. "They're the fluffy things Juliet keeps hidden in her dress here and here," she said proudly, tapping her chest to indicate just where these fluffy objects were located.
Patrick blinked. "That's quite enough, Katie love. Why don't you go paint some flowers or something. I need to have a word alone with Juliet. ~ Rose Gordon

Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

To lose the touch of flowers and women's hands is the supreme separation. ~ Albert Camus

No wreaths please - especially no hothouse flowers. Some common memento is better, something he prized and is known by: his old clothes - a few books perhaps. ~ William Carlos Williams

There was an old, crazy dude who used to live a long time ago. His name was Lord Buckley. And he said, a long time ago, he said, 'People
they'r e kinda like flowers, and it's been a privilege walking in your garden.' My love goes with you. ~ Robin Williams

The Ballad of Lucy Jordan
The morning sun touched lightly on the eyes of Lucy Jordan
In a white suburban bedroom in a white suburban town
As she lay there 'neath the covers dreaming of a thousand lovers
Till the world turned to orange and the room went spinning round.

At the age of thirty-seven she realised she'd never
Ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair.
So she let the phone keep ringing and she sat there softly singing
Little nursery rhymes she'd memorised in her daddy's easy chair.

Her husband, he's off to work and the kids are off to school,
And there are, oh, so many ways for her to spend the day.
She could clean the house for hours or rearrange the flowers
Or run naked through the shady street screaming all the way.

At the age of thirty-seven she realised she'd never
Ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair
So she let the phone keep ringing as she sat there softly singing
Pretty nursery rhymes she'd memorised in her daddy's easy chair.

The evening sun touched gently on the eyes of Lucy Jordan
On the roof top where she climbed when all the laughter grew too loud
And she bowed and curtsied to the man who reached and offered her his hand,
And he led her down to the long white car that waited past the crowd.

At the age of thirty-seven she knew she'd found forever
As she rode along t ~ Marianne Faithfull

All our bright minds," Feynman said sardonically, "and we can't figure how to stop the enemy from dumping dirt on us." Freeman said with delicate precision, "We are hothouse flowers, really. Not made for the blunt edge of war." Nods ~ Gregory Benford

[O]ur segment of the picture consists only of tired and dirty soldiers who are alive and don't want to die; of long darkened convoys in the middle of the night; of shocked silent men wandering back down the hill from battle; of chow lines and atabrine tablets and foxholes and burning tanks and Arabs holding up eggs and the rustle of high-flown shells; of jeeps and petrol dumps and smelly bedding rolls and C rations and cactus patches and blown bridges and dead mules and hospital tenets and shirt collars greasy-black from months of wearing; and of laughter too, and anger and wine and lovely flowers and constant cussing. All these it is composed of; and of graves and graves and graves. ~ Ernie Pyle

So coming back from a journey, or after an illness, before habits had spun themselves across the surface, one felt that same unreality, which was so startling; felt something emerge. Life was most vivid then. One could be at one's ease. Mercifully one need not say, very briskly, crossing the lawn to great old Mrs. Beckwith, who would be coming out to find a corner to sit in, "Oh, good-morning, Mrs. Beckwith! What a lovely day! Are you going to be so bold as to sit in the sun? Jasper's hidden the chairs. Do let me find you one!" and all the rest of the usual chatter. One need not speak at all. One glided, one shook one's sails (there was a good deal of movement in the bay, boats were starting off) between things, beyond things. Empty it was not, but full to the brim. She seemed to be standing up to the lips in some substance, to move and float and sink in it, yes, for these waters were unfathomably deep. Into them had spilled so many lives. The Ramsays'; the children's; and all sorts of waifs and strays of things besides. A washerwoman with her basket; a rook; a red-hot poker; the purples and grey-greens of flowers: some common feeling held the whole. ~ Virginia Woolf

I love to see the bud bursting into maturity; I love to mark the deepening tints with which the beams of heaven paint the expanded flower; nay, with a melancholy sort of pleasure, I love to watch that progress towards decay, so endearingly bespeaking a fellowship in man's transient glory ~ Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna

We were emerging from the period of war, of uniforms, of women-soldiers built like boxers. I drew women-flowers, soft shoulders, fine waists like liana and wide skirts like corolla. ~ Christian Dior

Love is wild; its whole beauty is in its wildness. It comes like a breeze with great fragrance, fills your heart, and suddenly where there was a desert there is a garden full of flowers. ~ Osho

Joy has to do with seeing how big, how completely unobstructed, and how precious things are. Resenting what happens to you and complaining about your life are like refusing to smell the wild roses when you go for a morning walk, or like being so blind that you don't see a huge black raven when it lands in the tree that you're sitting under. We can get so caught up in our own personal pain or worries that we don't notice that the wind has come up or that somebody has put flowers on the diningroom table or that when we walked out in the morning, the flags weren't up, and that when we came back, they were flying. ~ Pema Chodron

Winter has caused damage everywhere: meadow and forest are all grey, where before you heard many sounds. If I could see the girls play ball on the street, then bird song would come back. If only I could sleep through the winter! When I am awake I feel only hatred that his power is so far and wide. God knows, he even fights with May; I picked flowers where there is now snow. ~ Walther Von Der Vogelweide

Life is giving you another chance to plant your seeds. Take care of them by watering them, nurturing them throughout all seasons, and watch your flowers bloom."

~Love is respect ♥~ ~ Charlena E. Jackson

I merely feel emptyness. A hollow of dead brush where flowers use to bloom. ~ Suzanne Collins

She waited uneasily and shyly. From afar he saw that her eyes
clearly her father's
were filled with desperate innocence. He pictured, in her, his own redemption. Violins and lit candles revolved in the sky. Leo ran forward with flowers out-thrust. ~ Bernard Malamud

Various stars. Various kings.
Various sunsets, signs, cursory insights.
Many minute attentions, many knowledgeable watchers,
Much cold, much overbearing darkness.

Various long midwinter Glooms.
Various Solitary and Terrible Stars.
Many Frosty Nights, many previously Unseen Sky-flowers.
Many people setting out (some of them kings) all clutching at stars.

...

Various people coming home (some of them kings). Various headlights.
Two or three children standing or sitting on the low wall.
Various winds, the Sea Wind, the sound-laden Winds of Evening
Blowing the stars toward them, bringing snow. ~ Alice Oswald

February turned into March and Hiccup was still thinking. A few flowers made the mistake of appearing and were immediately blasted out of existence by a couple of hard frosts that had kept themselves back for this very purpose. ~ Cressida Cowell

The ochre-yellow linoleum floor hasn't been scrubbed for some time; splotches of dirt bloom on it like grey pressed flowers. ~ Margaret Atwood

Most of the time, lies are like having a needle dragged across the skin. If it only grazes the surface, and never leaves a mark, it doesn't faze the person that is being lied to. Other times, it's like a tiny pinprick on your finger. It draws a little blood to the surface, but stings like hell. You might be sore for a while, but you eventually heal and move on. Then, there are the other times, when the cut feels like it came from a machete, slicing so deeply that healing feels impossible.
Max's lie cut me right to the bone. ~ Loni Flowers

Royal summoned mourners. They came from the village, from the neighboring hills and, wailing like dogs at midnight, laid siege to the house. Old women beat their heads against the walls, moaning men prostrated themselves: it was the art of sorrow, and those who best mimicked grief were much admired. After the funeral everyone went away, satisfied that they'd done a good job. ~ Truman Capote

Friendship is a sacred possession. As air, water and sunshine to flowers, trees and verdure, so smiles, sympathy and love of friends to the daily life of man. To live, laugh, love one's friends, and be loved by them is to bask in the sunshine of life. ~ David O. McKay

Good will is a power that can be used every day of the year and every hour of the day. It is instantly available. By continuously practicing good will we cultivate a deep subconscious habit of good will. It becomes a pattern of our response in all situations. Good will works as silently as the sun and with as much power. It thaws the ice and snow of resistance and indifference. It warms and wins human hearts. It draws forth the best in others as flowers are drawn from the soil. It stimulates growth. ~ Wilferd Peterson

A short distance away is the Tidal Basin, ringed by cherry trees that every year produce flowers, an event to which Washingtonians react as though it were the Second Coming of Christ. ~ Dave Barry

Look, Charlie," said Vince leaning back in his chair. "It's real simple. We will be four people
two men and two women
I figure it's better to have two women instead of three men and one woman so she'll have someone she can confide in and all. Women need that kind of thing. Anyway, we'll be four people
friends
housemates
equal partners. We'll be an alliance. We'll be just like family. And we'll help take care of one another. We'll have a nice home, each with our own private bedroom and bathroom, and a nice yard with flowers."
"And maybe a vegetable garden," added Charlie.
"That's it," grinned Vince. ~ Barbara Casey

From the very fountain of enchantment there arises a taste of bitterness to spread anguish amongst the flowers. ~ Lucretius

Love's Question "
And is this all true,
My ever-loving friend?
That the lightning-flash of the light in my eyes
Makes the clouds in your heart explode and blaze,
Is this true?
That my sweet lips are red as a blushing new bride,
My ever-loving friend,
Is this true?

That a tree of paradise flowers withing me,
That my foosteps ring like vinas beneath me,
Is this true?
That the night sheds drops of dew at the sight of me,
That the dawn surrounds me with light from delight in me,
Is this true?
That the touch of my hot cheek intoxicates the breeze,
My ever-loving friend,
Is this true?

That daylight hides in the dark of my hair,
That my arms hold life and death in their power,
Is this true?
That the earth can be wrapped in the end of my sari,
That my voice makes the world fall silent to hear me,
Is this true?
That the univrse is nothing but me and what loves me,
My ever-loving friend,
Is this true?

That for me alone your love has been waiting
Through worlds and ages awake and wandering,
Is this true?
That my voice, eyes, lips have brought you relief,
In a trice, from the cycle of life after life,
Is this true?
That you read on my soft forehead inginite Truth,
My ever-loving friend,
Is this true? ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Anys was so skilled with plants and balms that she knew how to extract their fragrant oils, and these she wore on her person so that a light, pleasant scent, like summer fruits and flowers, always preceded her. ~ Geraldine Brooks

She was beautiful and lithe, with soft skin the color of bread and eyes like green almonds, and she had straight black hair that reached to her shoulders, and an aura of antiquity that could just as well have been Indonesian as Andean. She was dressed with subtle taste: a lynx jacket, a raw silk blouse with very delicate flowers, natural linen trousers, and shoes with a narrow stripe the color of bougainvillea. 'This is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen,' I thought, when I saw her pass by with the stealthy stride of a lioness, while I waited in the check-in line at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris for the plane to New York. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I'll cover you in flowers someday, Julie-girl. ~ Lurlene McDaniel

Each year before the first rain after the harvest in Spring, I would look at the dry peach tree that I know so well at our backyard and anticipating that in summer it will be covered in an overgrown hedge unless my father who was a committed gardner of note take a weekend off from Jo'burg during the pruning season to prune it. Even now, I still remember with crystal clarity my childhood mood - warm days in Schoonoord with rich nostalgia of green scenery and flowers flowering everywhere.

One evening I was sitting at the veranda of our firehut looking at the orange tree between the plat (flat - roofed) house and the big L - shaped house - the tree served as a shelter from the sun for the drinking water pot next to the plat house - suddenly the weather changed, the wind howled, the tree swayed, the loose corrugated iron sheets on roof of he house clattered and clanged, the open windows shuts with a bang and the sky made night a day, and I was overwhelmed with that feeling of childhood joy at the approaching rain. All of a sudden, the deafening of steady pouring rain. The raging storm beat the orange tree leaves while I sat there remembering that where the orange tree stood used to be our first house, a small triangular shaped mokhukhu ((tin house) made of red painted corrugated iron sheets salvaged from demolishing site in Witbank, also remembering that my aunt's mokhukhu was also made of the same type and colour of corrugated iron sheets. The ashen ground drunk m ~ Pekwa Nicholas Mohlala

I'd want our wedding to be special. I don't have a dress, you don't have a best man, and instead of flowers, we have corpses on poles decorating the front of the house."
"Flowers are on the way, as is my best man, three seamstresses are ready to make any dress you desire, and I'll have the corpses taken down," he replied without missing a beat. ~ Jeaniene Frost

Rose is not the prettiest flower, neither water lily or petunia nor magnolia! An elegant soul is the prettiest flower on earth! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day." This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. ~ Henry David Thoreau