Roses Rhododendron Quotes

A wise friend told me that we all could use more than one set of parents - our relations with the original set are too intense, and need dissipating. ~ Alice Adams

Not even thorns can stop roses from being beautiful. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

May you become as the waves of one sea, stars of the same heaven, fruits adorning the same tree, roses of one garden in order that through you the oneness of humanity may establish its temple in the world of mankind, for you are the ones who are called to uplift the cause of unity among the nations of the earth. ~ Abdu'l- Baha

Silly little monster" all would say.
They'd scratch its head and turn away
until it snatched their tiny noses.
They couldn't even smell the roses!
Ever after, every child
dreaded monsters, fierce or mild. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

How I loved the feasts! ... I especially loved the processions in honor of the Blessed Sacrament. What a joy it was for me to throw flowers beneath the feet of God! ... I was never so happy as when I saw my roses touch the sacred Monstrance ... ~ Therese Of Lisieux

The truth is, that all genuine appreciation rests on a certain mystery of humility and almost of darkness. The man who said, "Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed," put the eulogy quite inadequately and even falsely. The truth "Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall be gloriously surprised." The man who expects nothing sees redder roses than common men can see, and greener grass, and a more startling sun. Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall possess the cities and the mountains; blessed is the meek, for he shall inherit the earth. Until we realize that things might not be we cannot realize that things are. Until we see the background of darkness we cannot admire the light as a single and created thing. As soon as we have seen that darkness, all light is lightening, sudden, blinding, and divine. ~ G.K. Chesterton

She threw open the window to breathe in the spring air, heavy with the sweet perfume of roses and heather. To her right was the rolling glen beckoning her to come and walk. 'Sit here awhile and dream your thoughts on this flat rock.' How often had she done that? ~ Karen Ranney

Keen winter stabs the breasts of May
Whose crimson roses burst his frost,
Ships tempest-tossed
Will find a harbour in some bay,
And so we may. ~ Oscar Wilde

She looked at the knife, her throat tight with emotion. No roses or rings with him, but a knife with feathers carved into the handle. A knife that was part of him. She couldn't accept it. ~ Veronica Rossi

When you go to a garden, do you look at thorns or flowers? Spend more time with the roses and jasmine. ~ Rumi

I have loved you from the moment you opened your eyes, and I will continue to love you long after I close mine. I will always be yours Aurora. I don't exist without you. ~ Nathalie Saade

You should eat. It's going to be a rough day for you. Finding out the world isn't all sunshine and roses takes a lot out of you ~ Pam Logan

I think, she began quietly, I think we want ... not just bread for our bellies. We want more than only bread. We want food for our hearts, our souls. We want- how to say it? We want, you know- Puccini music ... we want for our beautiful children some beauty. She leaned over and kissed the curl on her finger. We want roses ... ~ Katherine Paterson

Lawn as white as driven snow; Cyprus black as e'er was crow; Gloves as sweet as damask roses. ~ William Shakespeare

The inside of his skull, it tasted like roses and barbed wire and butterflies. Switchblades and heroin and grassy green gardens. ~ Mercedes M. Yardley

So we could have roses in December. Someone did not add, So we could have blizzards in June and food poisoning when there was nothing to eat. ~ Amy Bloom

Can you hear the echoes of a faint whisper in the breeze? Can you smell the fragrance of the roses and the trees? Can you see my soul reaching out from within? Can you feel my fingertips dance upon your skin? Let the sky fall dim as our love ignites, losing sense of the days and the never-ending nights. ~ Raneem Kayyali

Lady Rose, you grow lovelier every time I see you."
Had it been a stranger who spoke she might have been flustered, but since it was Archer, Grey's younger brother, she merely grinned in response and offered her hand. "And your eyesight grows poorer every time you see me, sir."
He bowed over her fingers. "If I am blind it is only by your beauty."
She laughed at that, enjoying the good-natured sparkle in his bright blue eyes. He was so much more easy-natured than Grey, so much more full of life and flirtation. And yet, the family resemblance could not be denied even if Archer's features were a little thinner, a little sharper.
How would Grey feel if she found a replacement for him in his own brother? It was too low, even in jest.
"Careful with your flattery, sir," she warned teasingly. "I am trolling for a husband you know."
Archer's dark brows shot up in mock horror. "Never say!" Then he leaned closer to whisper. "Is my brother actually fool enough to let you get away?"
Rose's heart lurched at the note of seriousness in his voice. When she raised her gaze to his she saw only concern and genuine affection there. "He's packing my bags as we speak."
He laughed then, a deep, rich sound that drew the attention of everyone on the terrace, including his older brother.
"Will you by chance be at the Devane musicale next week, Lord Archer?"
"I will," he remarked, suddenly sober. "As much as it pains me to enter that viper's pit. I'm ac ~ Kathryn Smith

If you're a star you go through the front door carrying the roses, instead of through the back door carrying the garbage. ~ Robert Stack

From the corner of her eye, the wildflowers along the wall caught her attention. "Roar, wait!"
Roar turned around. "Yes?" he asked, arching an eyebrow.
Aria ran to the wall, scanning the flowers. She found the right one and plucked it. She drew in its scent and imagined Perry walking beside her, his bow across his back, looking over with his lopsided grin.
She brought the flower to Roar. "I changed my mind," she said. "Give him this."
Roar's eyes crinkled in confusion. "I thought you liked roses. What's this?"
"A violet." ~ Veronica Rossi

Sonnet 130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare. ~ William Shakespeare

Debbie truly had Tess's best interest at heart with the promoting of romanticized contemplation, and she hoped that such contemplation would make transparent a roses and chocolate candy theme that would ignite a passionate desire in her friend for deep intimate companionship that would make lengthy modifications until it became a candlelight connection that would light up brightly and cause a common smile to take form in the lives of two singles. But the detailed scene of Tess's grander purview on the overall picture placed her friend's intent in a corner of stagnant nothingness that had no realistic chance of ever modifying into the romantic reality that she advocated. ~ Calvin W. Allison

Such are the visions which proffer great cornucopias full of fruit to the solitary traveller, or murmur in his ear like sirens lolloping away on the green sea waves, or are dashed in his face like bunches of roses, or rise to the surface like pale faces which fishermen flounder through floods to embrace. ~ Virginia Woolf

Love is a sickness, A strange connection,
It's a big hobby, o sweet heart..!
Listened many stories,
From elders and wise persons,
But never believe,
Never thought,
Those stories are considerable,
Sitting on the throne of myself,
Never came to know...!
Above that throne, at too much height,
Somewhere
In the crowd of fairies,
In the Anklet of your feet,
In the Shadow of your tresses,
in your small village,
Sun, moon and all stars dance crazily..!
I never came to know all this, o sweetheart,
On the sound of your walking feet, on your pink smile,
On the movement of your eyebrows, on your lovely voice, on your killing eyes,
All flowers of garden care well, for a very little moment of closeness with you sacrifice their life,
I never came to know all this, o sweetheart…!
Moonlit after touching your body propagate everywhere,
Roses get the fragrance from your sweating, in the form of due drops,
I never came to know all this, o sweetheart…!
I was very confident, never face this,
Wise heart, will never be crazy,
but,
Then it happened, sweetheart..!
Felt very sad, sweet heart..!
Heart converted in to blood and started flowing, o sweet heart..!
Convinced too by the movement of your eyebrow,
Came for donation, became a recipient, o sweet heart..!
Convinced by the sayings of elders,
That,
Love is a sickness, a strange conn ~ Zia

Rocket ships are exciting but so are roses on a birthday. ~ Leonard Nimoy

When you're watching television, you don't want to watch a show where everything just works out. You don't want to see a relationship that's just blossoming and everyone's happy and sunshine and roses all the time. That's also not true in life. ~ Candice Accola

She is forever beautiful just like the roses. ~ Avijeet Das

There is a bench in the back of my garden shaded by Virginia creeper, climbing roses, and a white pine where I sit early in the morning and watch the action. Light blue bells of a dwarf campanula drift over the rock garden just before my eyes. Behind it, a three-foot stand of aconite is flowering now, each dark blue cowl-like corolla bowed for worship or intrigue: thus its common name, monkshood. Next to the aconite, black madonna lilies with their seductive Easter scent are just coming into bloom. At the back of the garden, a hollow log, used in its glory days for a base to split kindling, now spills white cascade petunias and lobelia.

I can't get enough of watching the bees and trying to imagine how they experience the abundance of, say, a blue campanula blosssom, the dizzy light pulsing, every fiber of being immersed in the flower. ...

Last night, after a day in the garden, I asked Robin to explain (again) photosynthesis to me. I can't take in this business of _eating light_ and turning it into stem and thorn and flower...

I would not call this meditation, sitting in the back garden. Maybe I would call it eating light. Mystical traditions recognize two kinds of practice: _apophatic mysticism_, which is the dark surrender of Zen, the Via Negativa of John of the Cross, and _kataphatic mysticism_, less well defined: an openhearted surrender to the beauty of creation. Maybe Francis of Assissi was, on the whole, a kataphatic mystic, as was Thér ~ Mary Rose O'Reilley

Do not forget about the thorns on the roses
when you say that love is like a red red rose. ~ Isabel Quintero

The roses of pleasure seldom last long enough to adorn the brow of him who plucks them; for they are the only roses which do not retain their sweetness after they have lost their beauty. ~ Hannah More

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.
"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has
tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew
him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him
my friend, and now he is unique in all the world." (Chapter XXI) ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had his hand in this,

as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel,
(brave even among lions),
"It's not the weight you carry

but how you carry it -
books, bricks, grief -
it's all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,
put it down."
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?

Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?

How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe

also troubled -
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply? ~ Mary Oliver

What about my kiss? ~ Sarah J. Maas

But he who dares not grasp the thorn
Should never crave the rose. ~ Anne Bronte

Translating this to the spiritual regions as their wont is, the poets sang beautifully how roses fade and petals fall. The moment is brief they sang; the moment is over; one long night is then to be slept by all. ~ Virginia Woolf

The great chasm of memory from her childhood in the intimate country surroundings of Cossethay and the Marsh Farm - she remembered the servant Tilly, who used to give her bread and butter sprinkled with brown sugar, in the old living-room where the grandfather clock had two pink roses in a basket painted above the figures on the face - and now when she was travelling into the unknown with Birkin, an utter stranger - was so great, that it seemed she had no identity, that the child she had been, playing in Cossethay churchyard, was a little creature of history, not really herself. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Some people grumble that roses have thorns; I am grateful that thorns have roses. ~ Alphonse Karr

When serpents bargain for the right to squirm
and the sun strikes to gain a living wage -
when thorns regard their roses with alarm
and rainbows are insured against old age
when every thrush may sing no new moon in
if all screech-owls have not okayed his voice
- and any wave signs on the dotted line
or else an ocean is compelled to close
when the oak begs permission of the birch
to make an acorn - valleys accuse their
mountains of having altitude - and march
denounces april as a saboteur
then we'll believe in that incredible
unanimal mankind (and not until) ~ E. E. Cummings

Always stop to smell the roses. If there are no roses available, scented candle should work. ~ Arthur Longmore

You've always been so agreeable," he remarked with something of a rueful tone. "I don't understand why you haven't told me to sod off."
She couldn't help but chuckle. "Other than the simple fact that I would never say those words to anyone?"
He glanced at her, eyes sparkling. "Even so. I am humbled by your easy acceptance of me. I behaved abominably toward you years ago and yet you act as though nothing ever happened."
Rose twirled the handle of her parasol. "We cannot change the past, Mr. Maxwell. I reckon I would be a much happier woman if I could. No, all we can do is go forward."
His brow furrowed. "Does that mean you forgive me?"
She laughed again. "Yes, it does. I understand why you had to abandon your courtship after my father's misfortune and I do not blame you for it."
Kellan shook his head. "You are too good."
"No," she insisted with a sharp shake of her head. "I am not." Lord, if he but knew just how not good she could be! Of course, if they were married he'd realize that on their wedding night, wouldn't he? Or could she deceive him and make him believe she was a virgin? It wouldn't be right, but she would do it to spare his feelings, and keep her secrets. "But, I can be practical when the situation calls for it."
"Is that why you're here with me now?" he asked with amusement. "Practicality?"
Rose's smile was coy in reply. "Perhaps. Or perhaps I like giving the gossips something to natter about."
Kellan laughed alou ~ Kathryn Smith

Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work. 'The kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared' (Luther). ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I sent my daughter 40 roses last November because I thought she was 40. And she laughed her head off. She is not going to be 40 until this year! ~ Eartha Kitt

Beauty is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight,or springtime, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you...Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed...Ah! realise your youth while you have it. Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar...Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing...The world belongs to you for a season...how tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is such a little time that your youth will last. The common hillflowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty, becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the co ~ Oscar Wilde

Song


When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

Sir Thomas Wyatt has been credited with introducing the Petrarchan sonnet into the English language. Wyatt's father had been one of Henry VII's Privy Councilors and remained a trusted adviser when Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509. Wyatt followed his father to court, but it seems the young poet may have fallen in love with the king's mistress, Anne Boleyn. Their acquaintance is certain, although whether or not the two actually shared a romantic relationship remains unknown. But in his poetry, Wyatt called his mistress Anna and there do seem to be correspondences. For instance, this poem might well have been written about the King's claim on Anne Boleyn: ~ Christina Rossetti

Though what is 'Romeo and Juliet' after all?" he added after a short pause. "The beauty of poetry and holiness of love are simply the roses under which they try to hide its rottenness. Romeo is just the same sort of animal as all the rest of us. ~ Anton Chekhov

For my nymphet I needed a diminutive with a lyrical lilt to it. One of the most limpid and luminous letters is "L". The suffix "-ita" has a lot of Latin tenderness, and this I required too. Hence: Lolita. However, it should not be pronounced as you and most Americans pronounce it: Low-lee-ta, with a heavy, clammy "L" and a long "o". No, the first syllable should be as in "lollipop", the "L" liquid and delicate, the "lee" not too sharp. Spaniards and Italians pronounce it, of course, with exactly the necessary note of archness and caress. Another consideration was the welcome murmur of its source name, the fountain name: those roses and tears in "Dolores." My little girl's heartrending fate had to be taken into account together with the cuteness and limpidity. Dolores also provided her with another, plainer, more familiar and infantile diminutive: Dolly, which went nicely with the surname "Haze," where Irish mists blend with a German bunny - I mean, a small German hare. ~ Vladimir Nabokov